


Drug Money, Murder, and Warnings for Mild Torture

by Kileykao



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Fake AH Crew, Multi, Pre-Fake AH Crew, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-27 16:57:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17165768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kileykao/pseuds/Kileykao
Summary: Once upon a time, there were three fourteen year old boys scared to death of their future. A lonely Southern drug dealer, a murderous cat burglar, and tortured boy who craves blood on hands. The three of them, at fourteen might not know it yet,But the three of them are going to rule the world.





	Drug Money, Murder, and Warnings for Mild Torture

**Author's Note:**

> So this fanfiction is almost three years in the making. The google doc that this was written in was started in April of 2016, and from day one this has been a journey to write. From the beginning to the end, I have loved every second of this verse. This is the longest thing I’ve ever written, and finished, by a long shot. And this has certainly been one of the more interesting things I’ve written.
> 
> This was fun to write, and honestly I want to write more. But almost three years and nearly twenty five thousand words later, I think I have found a good ending for these boys. 
> 
> Also no beta reader. We post with minimal editing like men.

The world is a harsh place. People, adults mostly, like to tell children that everything gets better. That no matter how low your life might seem now, it can only go up. That one day everything will magically fall into place. That everything, the bad, the nasty and the ugly will go away, and it will be replaced with something else, something better, something happy. That the not so good will be replaced with happiness, and goodness, and love, and everything else left in between.

That one thing, one person, your soulmate, will change everything. One person will make life worth living. That you’ll love this person more than anything, more than anyone, and that in return they will love you more than anything else in return. 

And that’s why you should keep on fighting. Keep living. 

Because everyone has that somebody. The someone whose name matches the one etched into your wrist. Your soulmate. It’s sappy, but everyone has one. Sometimes the names are in random colors, written in those cheap drugstore gel pens, sometimes the name are written in barely legible chicken scratch, sometimes their name is written in fancy cursive in pitch black ink. But it’s always just the first name, and the name always shows up on your 15th birthday. 

For most, these names are the reason that people want to keep living.  
Keep on fighting.  
For the Hope that you meet that someone whose name is etched onto your wrist.  
Your soulmate. 

Some people aren’t so lucky, they hold out the hope of finding that one special someone for years on end, only to live out their lives waiting for someone who will never come. Some people meet their soulmates as children, they grow up together and find out together that they are indeed soulmates after spending their entire life together. Some people use the name on their wrist to keep fighting, other people hide away their name, ashamed of what it says.

For Jeremy, he never really believed that a simple name on his wrist would magically make everything better. At 14, he didn’t believe that there was someone out there for him and that they would just make everything better with a simple ‘hello’ like all the sappy love stories say. A part of him wanted to believe it. Wanted to believe that one day his life would get better. But nothing in his shitty childhood gave him room to think about it, or to think about what the name his wrist might hold for him. Because he saw his father and mother work three jobs each and still struggle with money, still struggle to put food on the table. He saw his mother and father’s names etched onto their wrists, but still yell and scream at each other during cold and bitter Boston nights. He still saw them hate each other's guts behind closed doors, and keep the appearance of happy soulmates in public. 

For Jeremy, love was tangled. Love was messy. Love was not getting feed enough food and the bruises and scars from bullies left behind from punches and kicks. For Jeremy love wasn’t something that came easily. Because for him, the love he saw growing up was messy, tangled and complicated. Jeremy may understand why people make promises they can’t keep and why people fall in love, but he didn’t quite get the sappy love stories where everything and everyone lived happily ever after because for him there were no happy endings in sight.  
Not at least while he was 14. 

For Matt, believing was all that there was at the age of 14. Believing that someone could deal with him, and his anger, and his bitterness, and his loneliness, and his envy of what everyone around him had. Someone who could deal with his everything. Believing that a name would show up on his wrist on his up and coming birthday is what kept Matt going. Not his parents. There were times where Matt wouldn’t see his parents for months on end. Matt being handed off from Nanny to Nanny, because his parents were in California, or France, or Las Vegas, or Canada or wherever on Business. The only explanation being given that ‘you’re too young, you wouldn’t understand, you’ll understand why it is that they have to leave when you're older’. Being told ‘You’ll understand when you’re older Matthew.’ Time and time again. 

For Matt, love is leaving. Love is empty. Love is his parents telling him that they have to go to Japan for the next two months. Love for Matt is being left behind and filled with broken promises. Because the love he saw growing up was being told goodbye time and time again, and promises that almost always got broken. (‘I promise we’ll make it to your science fair Matthew.’ ‘I promise we’ll be there for this Matthew’ ‘I promise we’ll do that Matthew’). Matt may understand sappy love stories where everyone lives happily ever after, and why people fall in love, but he doesn’t understand why people make promises that they can’t keep.  
Not at least while he was 14. 

For Trevor, he wanted to believe that he had a soulmate. He really did. His foster parents though, told him day in and day out that he didn’t have one. That he didn’t deserve one. That if he did have one they would never love him. His foster parent left him with purple patched bruises and cherry red-stained clothes. Trevor wanted to believe that someone out there would have his name and he would have theirs. That someone would be his soulmate. But his foster parents day in and day out told him that he was useless, and worthless, and didn’t have a soulmate. Believing was something that Trevor wanted, but for him was always just a bit out of reach. 

For Trevor, love was toxic. Love was violent. Love is harsh and toxic words being pounded into his head day after day. Love is the all crimson red-stained clothes in the back of his closet and harsh comments thrown his way every day. (‘Your soulmate will hate your fucking guts.’ ‘you ain’t got no soulmate boy’ ‘Even if you do have a soulmate they’ll hate your fucking guts’) Trevor may understand sappy love stories where everyone gets their happily ever after, and why people make promise they can’t keep, but he can’t for the life of him understand why people ever fall in love in the first place.  
Not at least while he was 14. 

These three boys don’t quite know it yet, but the three of them are meant to spend a lifetime and them some together. But for now at the tender age of 14, they are stuck with the uncertainty that they might not have a soulmate. For now with their lives messy, and hollow, and toxic. But one day they’ll find each other. It might not be today, or tomorrow, or next week, but they will find each other. But for now they're stuck with their toxic lives, still trying to find out who they are, and what life hold in store for them. 

For now, they have to figure out what a happily ever after is for them before they can have one of their own. 

*****************************************************************************************************

Matt ran away from home, for the first time, three days before his 15th birthday. His Therapist, when it was all said and done, and he was safely returned home to his small South Carolina town, would say it was about attention. His Therapist, Dr. Davidson, even if he was a dick ninety nine percent of the time and was someone who didn’t know how to listen to what Matt told him, wasn’t completely wrong about that. His parents hadn’t been home in almost four months, and they had told him the night before he left that they weren’t going to be coming home for his birthday, and it was the birthday. 

The birthday he would get to find out his soulmate's name. The birthday that he has been waiting for since he found out what soulmate are. But his parents decided that their own son’s birthday wasn’t all that important. The two of them decided that they could just not come home, and send a birthday card and a package of presents, and think that missing his birthday was okay just because they said ‘sorry’. So Matt left. He took his bike and hitchhiked his way out of his hometown in South Carolina.

(Matt was mostly proud of himself, he made it out of the state of South Carolina and into Georgia before he was caught by an off-duty cop in a diner two day later). 

His parents didn’t come home for him running away anyway, though. A small part of him hoped they would come back to South Carolina. That their only child running away was enough to get them to come back home. But apparently whatever deal they were making in China or Japan or whatever Asian country they were in this time was far too important to pass up on even though their only child had run away from home.  
That’s when Matt realized that his parents don’t really care about him. That it was all about their reputation of being a happy family. They call him up and yelled at him, though. They told him that they were worried sick. They told him don’t you ever do that again. They told him ‘it would not look good for our reputation Matthew’. The words cut through his skin and stuck with him always in the back of his mind. 

Matt promises the two of them that he wouldn’t run away again. It had never in his life been so easy to lie to his mom and dad.

Matt stayed up the night before his 15 birthday. A flashlight in one hand just waiting for the clock on his nightstand to tell him it was midnight. At midnight, he would know the name of his soulmate, and it was nerve wracking, and scary. He was watching the clock on his nightstand slowly count to midnight. It could be anyone. And that thought scared Matt the most. Because it could be someone on the other side of the world or someone just down the street.

At the ten minute mark, Matt realizes that he’s scared, he’s nervous, and he’s still alone. But being alone isn’t a new feeling. At the five minute mark, he realized that his mom broke another promise. A long-standing promise that she would spend the night of his fifteenth birthday with him. How the two of them would eat ice cream, and watch shitty straight to VHS movies. But Matt has just about given up on his parent’s broken promises. A few too many were just that. Broken. 

At midnight, Matt looks downs at his wrists and watches as two names form onto the pale skin on the inside of his wrist.  
Jeremy and Trevor. 

Jeremy is written in green ink. Not just any green ink, though. It’s lime green ink and it makes Matt laugh. Because someone thought it would be a good idea to make a lime green ink pen. The lime green is neon and not sparkly like Matt would have thought it would be. It makes Matt wonder what kind of person Jeremy is, and if he uses lime green ink that isn’t even sparkly often. Trevor’s name, on the other hand, is written in a pink sparkly ink. The kind of gel pen that you get at the drugstore for a dollar, and use until way after the ink runs dry. The names are both written in a simple print. Trevor’s name is written in chicken scratch when compared to Matt’s own signature. It makes Matt smile because that means that it’s most likely not one of the people from school who all write their names with barely legible cursive. Like how Matt knows his name is written on Jeremy and Trevor’s skin. It makes Matt almost happy. Knowing that it’s not one of the kids from his school. One of the kids who talk about how their mommies and daddies will buy them anything, and how they're going to their own private island next weekend.  
(Those kids makes him sick.)

For the first time in a long time, Matt doesn’t feel alone. 

He does, in fact, run away again though. Just over a year later. If his parents can break promises, then so can he. Matt runs away a month after his 16th birthday. This time, he heads North. Instead of heading South, he heads toward North Carolina. DC, or New York or even Liberty City is where he is headed, he never really makes up his mind. Matt doesn’t even make it out of South Carolina.

He does it again on his 17th birthday. This time, he has his own car. He makes it further than he’s ever made it before, but he’s still brought back home by a police officer a day and a half later, this time, he makes it to Maryland. He spends the next year dreaming about leaving. About not having to answer to his parent about why he left or talk with Dr. Davidson about why left again for the third time in three years. 

When he turns 18 he doesn’t run away again though. He thinks that everyone expects him to. He knows he had wanted to when he was a fresh-faced 17 years old still bitter that Maryland wasn’t far enough away to be free from his parents grasp. He thinks that everyone thought because now that he was 18 and doesn’t legally have to stay at his parent’s house that he would bolt the second he was of age. But Matt stayed. Not because things were getting better at home. Matt has long since given up on things ever getting better with his parents.  
By that point, he hasn’t seen the two of them in over a year. 

No, Matt stays because in the last year he’s started to make a name for himself in his small South Carolina hometown. 

Matt stays in his shitty hometown in South Carolina because now he’s the person to go to if you want a fix. He’s the person who can get you any kind of drug you wanted. It’s a job. Not the kind of job he’d ever tell his parents about, but everyone in school knows that Matt is the guy you go to if you need a product for a fix. He’s at the top of the food chain of the drug underworld in South Carolina. 

For the first time in years, he has a reason to stay in his hometown. 

At 18 years old Matt Bragg gets into a dangerous world. A dangerous world of backstabbing and stabbing backs. It was then Matt realized that sometimes living life on the edge is the best way to live life. Matt at the 18, a barely legal adult, learns that his new world, the new life he leads, is a fun world more than anything else. It’s fun to watch people offer you more money than they have because of an addiction that they can’t quite quit. It’s fun to watch people get high and wasted on your product. To watch people fall apart on your wim. 

For Matt, the job he had selling and trading drugs became more about making his life fun again and more about filling the emptiness that his parents left him with, than it was about making money or getting the hell out of South Carolina. 

At the age of 18 Matt knew how to throw a punch and how to talk his way out of a fight and he certainly knew better than to try his own products. He still knew why people fell in love, and he still understood sappy love stories where everyone lived happily ever after. But for the first time in his life, he was starting to understand why people makes promises that they can’t keep. 

At 18, he was still growing up. 

********************************************************************************************************

Jeremy got a job a month before his 15th birthday. He had to lie about how old he was to get it, but he was making and getting his own money for the first time in his life. He was working at the shitty supermarket down the street from his parent’s shitty apartment that had a constant flow of rich old woman and snarky old men in it. But the job lets him put food on the table for himself when his parents can’t. It made him feel like he was grown up, like he was an adult.  
(Even if he was very far from it.) 

It was a shitty job that paid way below minimum wage at six dollars and thirty two cents an hour, but it was good enough to give Jeremy a stable stream of money to put food in his own belly, and not have to rely on his good for nothing parents for food that at the end of the day he might not even get. This job gave him not only a sense of freedom from his parents, but regular meals for the first time in years. 

Jeremy was looking forward to the day of his 15th birthday. The day before he was antsy and jittery. Jeremy was nervous about what would be written on his wrist. He was worried that nothing would be there. That he would be forever alone with no name written on his wrist. He worried that he soulmate wouldn’t like him, that is soulmate was something that he wasn’t. That he or she would see him and laugh at what he doesn’t have and the fucked up way he sees love. 

He stayed up till midnight anyway. He watched the clock slowly crawl towards his birthday, while he was stuck just waiting. Waiting for something that may or may not even come. As the clock slowly inched closer to midnight he wondered what kind of person his soulmate was. If they were a girl or a boy. If they liked video games like him. If they were as messed up as he was. At midnight his questions weren’t answered, not yet anyway, but he did watch as not one, but two names slowly formed on his inner wrist. 

Trevor and Matt.

The name Trevor was written in a pink ink. It was sparkly and reminded Jeremy of his favorite set of Gel pens that he had paid way too much money for, but loved them for his drawing and artwork, so he didn’t mind the 14.99 he shelled out for the 12 pack crappy pens. The name Trevor looked like it was written frantically like he was rushing through it. The name Matt, on the other hand, was in simple black ink. It looked like the ink was worth more than anything in his parent’s apartment. It was written out in cursive, and barely readable at that. The name also looked cut off. Almost like they were going to write Matthew, but decided against it. 

The names contrasted each other. The name Matt written all fancy and with precision in a pitch black ink that was darker than the Massachusetts sky on a summer night. While Trevor was written messily and in pink sparkly ink that made the name look childish, and adventurous compared to the other name written above it. 

The names written out on his wrist made Jeremy wonder what his own name looked like on their wrists. Did it look fancy, like Matt’s name, or rushed in gel pen like Trevor’s, or something in between. What kind of ink was his name written in? Jeremy’s mind rushed with questions, questions that he couldn’t answer just yet. 

But the names on Jeremy’s wrist made something in Jeremy stir. Jeremy didn’t yet know what that feeling was, but he it made him feel whole knowing that there were two people out there who would love him, who were his soulmates. Who would love him for him, and not what his parent told him he was. 

It made Jeremy watch sappy rom-coms in a whole new light, with a brand new attitude. 

At 16, just about two months before his 17th birthday, Jeremy lost his job at the supermarket because they found out that he had lied about his age to get the job. For the first time in over two years, Jeremy doesn’t have a way to put food on the table. So Jeremy starts looking for fights. Punches that he could throw at men three times his size to win bets with money he doesn’t have, and wallets that he could pickpocket for spare change. He started to fall onto the wrong side of the law and he couldn’t bring himself to care. 

At 17, he was kicked out of his parent's house. Not that he really cared anyway. His parent were dicks, and that place was never home anyway. At 17, two months after he’s kicked out of his parent’s house, Jeremy meets the leader of the Boston mob almost by mistake. He pickpocketed him, he had just needed the money to buy lunch, or if he was lucky a new winter coat. It was starting to get cold again, and his coat was a size or two too small, and ready to fall apart at the seams. But instead he stole the wallet of the wrong guy, and the local gangster gave him an ass kicking and a job offer. 

Jeremy knew who the man was, even if he didn’t know his face, he was on the news constantly and was almost untouchable by anyone the city. He was untouchable enough that the police had almost stopped caring about the crimes that he and his men committed. Two-thirds of the city was his and his alone. It was his kingdom, and the man sat atop piles and piles of dirty money and dead bodies. 

It was not the kind of job Jeremy ever thought he would get, but it was still a job. It was a job that let him put a roof over his head for the first time in two months, put food in his belly more regularly than when he was stealing wallets and making bets with money he didn’t have, and gave him the feeling that he was an adult again. It was the kind of job where he stole things from men who are just as bad as the one he has become almost overnight. His boss, the leader of the Boston mob called him a cat burglar with an angry side. He was a silent robber who can get in and get out faster than anyone else in the city. But if you cross him, if you make him mad, if you do something that makes him angry, you’ll have to face his dark side.  
A side that even the leader of the mob came to fear. 

(The first time Jeremy pulled the trigger. The first time put a bullet into someone. The first time he snapped, he went back to his shitty Boston apartment covered from head to toe in blood, and shaking in fear. His gun was on his kitchen counter. Before that night it was just for show. A part of his costume that he knew how to use, but didn’t want to ever pull the trigger. Jeremy fell apart as the blood circled down the drain of his shower, the spray of water hiding his tears. Jeremy picked up his pieces, and putting himself back together. Jeremy learned to bury away his fear. After that night, Jeremy wasn’t afraid to use his pistol)

Jeremy wasn’t just a hired gun to the mob in Boston they thought he would be, to the Boston mob Jeremy was a lot of different things. He was the man who moved their secrets, he was the man who stole secrets back for them when they taken, and the one who was paid to make sure that secrets were kept.  
To the Boston Mob, Jeremy was worth more than anyone could pay them for his head. 

At 17 years old Jeremy Dooley pickpocketed the wrong man and fell into a world of violence, greed, and blood soaked hands. It took Jeremy time, but he was growing up. He wasn’t the same kid that he was when he was 15 and had freshly gotten his soulmate tattoos. He became someone else in the process of joining the Boston mob. He became a ruthless, and tactical thief. He painted his hands red with his victim's blood and the sky gold with the secrets, the information, and the treasure that he stole from enemies, foes, and friends alike. 

At 17 years old, Jeremy Dooley picked up a gun and was forced into becoming an adult way to soon. 

At the young age of 17, he knew how to pick a lock, shoot a gun, and rob someone blind in under ten minutes. He still understands why people make promises that they can’t keep (it was his job to make promises that weren’t ever going to be kept), and why people fall in love. But for the first time ever thanks to two names, he was starting to understand sappy love stories where everyone lives happily ever after.

At 17, he was still growing up. 

********************************************************************************************************

Trevor, at the age of 14, dreamed of running away and he dreamed of becoming free of his step parents iron tight grip. These were things that would never happen. Trevor knew this. Trevor was always too scared of what would happen to him if he broke his step-parents rules. Those rules were simple of course. Do not miss school. Do not take what is not yours. Always listen to what Mr. and Mrs. Collins say to do. Be home by 3:45 after school. Be asleep by 11 pm. Do not speak out of turn. Do not talk about your brother. And do not tell anyone that your step-parents beat the living shit out of you on a daily basis. 

Trevor learned the hard way not to break those rules.  
His older brother on the other hand, was a defiant piece of work. 

Ryan was the only thing Trevor had of his life before the foster system. Ryan was the person who would tell tales of their parent. “Not these assholes, our real parents” Ryan used to say to Trevor when he was young. He would tell tales of their mother’s bleach blonde hair, and their father’s raven black hair. He would tell stories of how their parents met, their father chasing after Ryan in the park, and feeling Trevor kick in their mom’s belly.  
Ryan didn’t just tell stories to Trevor though, Ryan was the person who stood between him and his step-parents for year after year. Ryan was the person who patched up Trevor’s scraped knees, kissed his bruises better, and wiped up the blood left by their step-parents. 

Trevor was three months shy of being four years old when he was placed into the care of their soon to be step-parents. Ryan was 13 and, like Trevor, a few months shy of his birthday. His step-parents didn’t start off abusive. They didn’t start leaving bruises, setting harsh rules, and harsher punishments until they were officially adopted two years later.  
And even then, Ryan made sure that they didn’t ever lay a finger on him. 

Ryan was the one who kept him safe.  
Until the day his older brother turned 18.  
The day Ryan turned 18, their step-parent told Ryan to get out.  
And Trevor never saw his older brother again. 

Trevor who was barely eight years old had to say goodbye to his older brother, his best friend, and his protector. After Ryan was forced out of his life, Trevor learned how to take a hit, how to take a punch, how to hide bruises, how to hide cuts, how to fake clumsiness, and how to lie threw the skin of his teeth. 

Sometimes he would like to think about what would happen to Mr. and Mrs. Collins if he spoke up to his teacher, to his guidance counselor about what happens at home. Sometimes he liked to think about what he would do to Mr. and Mrs. Collins if he had guts to stand up to them. Sometimes he likes to think about how Mr. and Mrs. Collins would act if it were their blood on his hands and not the other way around.  
Mostly he just wanted to see his older brother again. He just wanted Ryan to come and get him.

For Trevor Collins, at the age of 14, life became about dreaming, not planning, what his life will be like when he is free from his step-parents. 

The night before his fifteenth birthday Trevor went to bed without dinner. It’s not anything new for him. He’s gone to bed without food plenty of times before, but this time, he’s dead set on staying up past his bedtime and watching his soulmate’s name form on his wrist. He’s not nervous or scared. If anything he’s antsy. Waiting and watching the alarm clock on his dresser count to midnight. When the clock passes eleven his step-father comes in and makes sure that he’s asleep, just like he does every night. Trevor is never asleep when Mr. Collins comes in. But he’s learned how to fake it. 

At half past eleven, Trevor realizes that the harsh words that his step-parents say to him might be right. That he might not have a soulmate, or they might hate him when they do meet somewhere down the line. That’s nothing new either, sitting in his room a half hour past the time that he was meant to be asleep crying to himself. At ten minutes to midnight, Trevor is once again silent, his eyes red and cheeks covered in tears. The only sound coming from the crickets singing songs from outside his window. By the five minute mark, Trevor's cheeks are dry, but his eyes are still red. 

He wonders if his soulmate is as fucked up as he is.

At midnight, Trevor watches two names form on his wrist. It makes him smile. Jeremy and Matt. Matt and Jeremy. He traces over the names like the ink in his wrist is what’s holding him to Earth. As he traces the names on the inside of his wrist, Trevor thought about how the names contradicted each other. How Matt’s name was written in ink darker than his step parents soul’s and Jeremy’s name was written in lime green ink. How Jeremy’s name was written in simple print, and Matt’s name was written in barely readable cursive. The two names are immensely different in the ways they look, one written in bright colors, the other pitch black. 

For the first time ever, for Trevor, life becomes less of waiting for the what if’s and more about the what will be’s. Because even if his step-parents have nothing but the nasty and harsh word to say to him, someone out there, two someone's out there, are his soulmates.  
For the first time in his life, Trevor realized that he could have his happily ever after. 

And in the end, it’s harsh words and toxic love that made Trevor become an adult just a bit too soon. It’s the harsh words and toxic love for years and years on end that made Trevor finally break. It’s every punch and kick that brings him to the point of no return. It’s 10 plus years of bloodstained clothes, toxic love, and demoralizing words that give him the strength to say no for the first time. 

Slowly and painfully and carefully his clothes become covered in a crimson color, but for once it not his own blood that is staining his hands. 

Trevor, at 16 years old, kills his first two victims. He kills them in a painstakingly slow way, with sharp silver kitchen knives and clear blue water from the sink in the basement laundry room. At 16 years old, Trevor kills his step-parents, he gets his revenge for all the fucked up things that they did to him and runs away from his sins.  
At 16, Trevor starts to look for Ryan to only run into dead end after dead end.

At 17 years old, Trevor finds himself living on the streets of Liberty City, twelve hours and 700 hundred miles away from his hometown. Trevor finds himself pick-pocketing money for food, and learning the ways of the criminal underworld of a city where the streets are lined with blood from the criminal men who run it, and the just as dirty cops who lines its streets.  
He’s far from home, but not quite far enough from the small town in Indiana still haunts his dreams. Trevor doesn’t know if he could ever really be far enough away from Indiana that the memories will stop hurting.

Trevor is a kid who became a teenager years too soon, and a teenager who became an adult at the first opportunity he got. A boy who's now long dead step-parents haunt his dreams, and always has an itch to have someone else's blood to be on his hands. 

He’s a boy who took to taking jobs that would leave him with the skin on his hand stained red for days afterward. 

When he meets one of the infamous leader of the Roosters, one of the five founding fathers of this criminal infested city at the age of 18, a year after he found himself in Liberty City, he doesn’t panic. He isn’t scared. Not much can scare him anymore. He’s seen too much. Done too much for anything crazy to throw him for a loop. The founding father, the infamous torturer of the Roosters, the one and the only Caboose was standing in front of him with a job offer. A job offer that promised money, fame, protection and a way to scratch the itch of wanting to see blood on his hands. 

Trevor didn’t care about fame or the protection. He didn’t want fame, he liked the shadows, he was content where he was. And he certainly could take care of himself, he has been fending for himself since he was eight years old. The money was good though, he didn’t need to live from job to job stealing wallets anymore.  
But Caboose, Joel Heyman, offered him something he couldn’t say no to. Caboose the infamous torturer of the great Roosters offered to take him under his wing. Offered to teach him the ins and outs of how to get information for someone. How to inflict pain in a slow and torturous way that wouldn’t kill the victim, to leave him bleeding just enough that it hurt until you got what you needed from him. 

At the age of 18, Trevor Collins joins the Roosters under the wing of the craziness that is Caboose. Trevor becomes part of a dangerous world, and not only does he enjoy the craziness that happens in what has now become his everyday life, he thrives in it. It took him a childhood filled with toxic words and harsh blows, but he found his first real family in the Roosters. He found a father figure who was just as messed up as him in Caboose, and happiness in the crazy and messed up things he does for his paycheck. In the process of joining the RT Crew, he became someone new. Because in a way he wasn’t the fucked up boy who killed his step-parents anymore, Trevor had grown up.

At the age of 18, Trevor learned a new set of skills that helped him to get paid.

At the age of 18, Trevor Collins knew how to break man, how to kill a man in the slowest and most painful way possible. He missed his brother more than anything, and still spent his free time trying to find him. He still understood why people make promises that they can’t quite keep, he still understands sappy love stories where everyone lives happily ever after, but thanks to two names on his wrist, and a founding father of a criminal city he was seeing real love that wasn’t toxic for the first time ever. But even still, Trevor was only just starting to understand why people fall in love. 

At 18, he was still growing up. 

********************************************************************************************************

Jeremy thought that he would be a part of the Boston Mob until the day he died, or was killed doing what he has grown to love over the past few years. He didn’t think that he would ever find a reason to leave Boston, and the Mob that taught him everything he knows. He knew what he was to the men who ran Boston’s criminal side, and he didn’t think they would ever find a reason for him not to be their confidant anymore.  
That being said, he also didn’t think that his boss was a major dickbag who couldn't be trusted.

Trust, in the kind of life that Jeremy leads, is something that you have to work for, has to be proven and earned over time. Jeremy thought that he could trust his boss. But in the end, Jeremy learned that to his boss he was just a disposable piece, a pawn, in a powerful man's chest set. Trust isn’t always as simple as it seems, especially when you work for a dangerous man in a dangerous world. 

But the thing is that most of the time when you work for a mob you are disposable. Jeremy knew this of course. He’s seen many member of the gang being ‘taken care of’, and he’s ‘taken care’ of more than a few members himself even. The only way that to a mob, or a gang, or a heist crew that you are not a disposable pawn in their fucked up game of chess is if you are high in the rankings. If you sit at the right hand of the leader, or if you're like Jeremy, know all the dirty little secrets of the mob, gang, or heist crew that you are a part of. This is the reason that Jeremy was a part of the same mob for just about four years with no problems. Jeremy was a robber, a thief, and the man who held the key to every dirty little secret that the Boston mob held. 

It was the only reason that Jeremy stayed alive as long as he did. Jeremy knew it too. 

But secrets aren't always a good thing in Jeremy’s line of work. 

A long time ago Jeremy was a lost kid who fell in love with the a life of crime. He fell in love with picking locks, the rattle of a shooting gun in your hand, and the power to pull the trigger to end a life. 

One day Jeremy Dooley was given a death mission, and he didn't take it. 

Not that long ago Jeremy Dooley ran away from Boston with 400 dollars in stolen small bills, a lock picking set, and a target on his head worth more money than he had ever seen. 

He lost a part of himself that night he didn't take the death mission. He lost the part of him who was still attached to Boston. The part of him that wanted to stay, and one day rule the underworld of the city he called his hometown.  
That part of him was long gone by the time he was out of Massachusetts.  
But he was still alive and breathing, and that was more important than his childish dreams of running the underworld of Boston. 

And he didn't stop running. He didn't stop until he was in Liberty City. He didn't run nearly as far away from Boston as he would have liked, but it would do. Because even though Jeremy had never been to Liberty City before the day he stopped running, he knows that his petty crimes of pickpocketing and robbing goods would go almost unnoticed. 

Because beneath it all Liberty City was a town of crime. A town run by the Roosters, and a town where cops are paid to look the other way, and the men who ran it were as dirty as the men who stole from it.

Liberty City would become his playground with rules that were meant to be broken. 

Jeremy Dooley at 21 isn't a part of the Boston mob any longer, he had a price on his head worth more than any amount of money he had ever seen, and he rented a shitty apartment on the wrong side of the city of crime for nickels and dimes. 

At 21, Jeremy Dooley didn't have a family. He hadn't yet met his soul mates and he started watching Rom-Coms in his spare time to try and understand what happily ever afters are. 

At 21 years old, Jeremy Dooley still understands why people fall in love, and he still understands why people make promises that they can't quite keep, but at 21 years old he still only sort of got why rom-coms and feel good movies that always end with everyone living happily ever after.

At 21, he still had things he needed to learn. 

******************************

Matt stopped being Matthew sometime after he graduated High School. His parents still called him Matthew, and so do most of the adults in the city. But by the time he was 19, he hadn’t even talked to his parents in almost two years, and he thinks it’s been three since he’s even seen them in person. But he can’t even remember when that last time was. 

His parents have taken to sending him a check twice month. Not that he needs it. The drugs he sells gives him more than enough money to pay for everything he needs in life. 

By the time he was 20, he was starting to feel that itch again though. The same one that he felt when he was a teenager. The one that made him feel like he needed to get the hell out of South Carolina. But this time he had the power to up and leave without his parent holding his leash. 

But he didn’t leave right away. He planned instead.

He started looking for where he should go. Places where the crime rate was higher than the arrest rate. Places where the cops are as dirty as the men who fill the streets. He looked for a new place to call home. 

Los Santos, the City of Saints, the City of Fakes, is where the internet tells him to go. But he’s not sure about it. Matt may deal drugs, but other than that he’s pretty useless in the crime world. He’s never killed a man, most of the time when people try to fight him for his drugs he talks his way out of it. Los Santos is the City of Saints, the City of Fakes, but also the city of men with a need to kill and that have a dead wish. It  
seems far away from what he does now. 

Los Santos, Matt knew if he continued down the path he was on, would one day be the city he calls his home. But for now he wasn’t yet the man he needed to be to make it the criminal world of Los Santos and the Fakes that lead it. 

For now he’ll go with number two on the internet’s list of the most criminal infested cities in America.

Liberty City. 

The article on the internet that listed Liberty City as the second largest crime city in America stated that “Liberty City is town of corruption, it’s a city of greed, Liberty City was the first city in America to truly belong to the largest crime group within the city. Liberty City, once was a town of freedom. A symbol of all the hope the new world held. But today the city that one represented the freedom that the new world had to offer, has now become a City of Roosters and the crimes that follows them.”

Matt, as much as he hates his parents, and the lonely feeling that they left him with, doesn’t just up and leave without telling his parents where he’s going. He feels like that they should know. Even if he can’t stand them on the best of days, he things that he’s run away enough time already, he doesn’t need to do it again without saying goodbye. He calls them the night before he leaves South Carolina. The night before he’s leaving his shitty small town of snotty rich kids, greedy businessmen, and cheating housewives. 

He tells them he’s going to College. There is one or two in Liberty City to make the lie believable. He gives the address to the apartment he had rent two weeks prior, and tell him he’ll see them soon. 

He know it’s a lie.

Matt leaves his home town the day of his twenty first birthday. He leaves the town that he’s wanted out of since he was fourteen and doesn’t ever look back.  
A part of him, only small part, thinks that he will miss the small town where everyone still calls him Matthew, and everyone knows who everyone is.  
(He doesn’t miss the town one bit.)

The great thing, Matt learns about Liberty City, is that it's big. That very rarely do you ever see the same face twice. Liberty City, the City of Roosters, as the internet likes to call it, is filled with shady people, but very rarely do you ever see the same face twice. But it’s so much more than that. Because the City, with it’s crime filled streets, the crooked men who run it, and back alleyway drug deals that happen in the darkest hours of the night, give the city a certain charm. A charm that only men like Matt can truly appreciate. 

A long time ago, Matt Bragg was a lonely boy who missed his parents, and while they were gone he fell in love with the power and control dealing drugs gave to him.

One day he left South Carolina and never looked back. And never even wanted to look to see what he left behind. 

Not so long ago, Matt Bragg learned why people call Liberty City a grown man's playground.

Because in a city of crime, in the city of Roosters, it isn’t just a town of crime, it isn’t just city run by greed. It’s playground. It’s playground for big kids. For the kids who never really got that memo that it was time to grow up. The City of Freedom, the City of Rooster, is a playground where if you’re careful, the rules don’t apply, and anything goes. 

Matt Bragg at 21 years old, is still dealing drugs, has ran away from everything he had in South Carolina, learned that he hated being called Matthew more than anything, and rented a shitty apartment in the shittiest part of Liberty City. 

At 21 years old, Matt started talking to his parent again. He hadn’t yet met his soulmates, and has started pickpocketing everyone, man or woman, in an expensive suit with a southern accent he comes across.

At 21 years old, Matt Bragg still understands why people fall in love, he still understands sappy movies where everyone lives happily ever after, but at 21 year olds he was only just starting to understand why people made promises that they couldn’t keep.

At 21, he still had a lot of things he needed to learn. 

********************************************************************************************************

It didn’t take long for Trevor to learn the ins and outs of Liberty City. He was a smart, loved learning new things, and the City of Roosters gave him new things to learn almost everyday. He learned what cops are just as dirty as the Roosters who control the city, he learned which judges are paid to keep criminals on the streets rather than off of them, and most importantly he learned which men to stay the fuck away from. 

Trevor learned to blend in. He learned to be just another twenty something white boy who came to the big city for an adventure. He learned how to lie his way into a bar, how to sweet talk his landlord into giving him cheaper rent on the shitty apartment that he pays way to much for. Trevor doesn’t just learn how to survive in the City of Roosters, he learns how to thrive in it.

For the first time in his life, he didn’t have abusive step parents breathing down his neck, and he didn’t have to follow the rules his stepfather set. He didn’t need to be scared, or hide under the covers and watch Ryan take punches for him. His long dead step-parents can’t hurt him anymore.

He still is in bed every night by 11pm.  
Some days he won’t speak a single word unless he’s spoken too.  
He still spends most of his free time looking for Ryan, only to learn nothing.  
Some habits, he learns, are harder to break than others. 

For Trevor, working for the Roosters was about satisfying his addiction, about satisfying his cravings. It was about hearing screams and pleads to stop.  
Trevor never does stops no matter how much you beg.  
It was about getting blood on his hands and the torturous things he could do to you, all while still keeping you breathing.  
For Trevor the job becomes less about the missions and more about having fun. 

Fun is not something Trevor’s use to. The idea of fun is foreign and ameer what if for him. The city becomes his playground. A playground where the rules don’t matter and anything goes. Caboose once told him that cities like Liberty City, like Los Santos, are cities for the people who didn’t have a childhood. For the people who never learned what it meant to be an adult. These cities, the cities of crime, the City of Roosters and the City of Fakes, are cities where people go to have the childhood the never had. 

But instead the nerf guns and water guns are replaced with real ones, water balloons are replaced with hand grenades, and blanket capes are replaced with parachutes.  
Trevor, as much as he can say that he likes what Liberty City has to offer, the people, the crime, the terror that fills the air after a heist. He can say that he like the chaos more. He likes the screams that fill the air, the blood that lines the pavement, and the bodies that line the streets. 

Trevor learns early on in his stay, that the city isn’t just any old playground. It’s a playground for crimes, and the rules don’t apply if your careful. 

Trevor Collins at 21 years old, has a job with the one of the biggest crime organizations in America, has learned how to thrive in the city of crime, still craves the screams of the people he tortures, aches to keep his hands painted red, and has one of the shittiest apartments in the worst part of Liberty City.

At 21 years old, he still can’t break habits that his step parents gave to him. He hadn’t yet met his soulmates, and started taking the jobs from Burnie that no one, not even Joel, wanted to take. He started taking the jobs that only the crazy men, or ones with death wish take. Joel tells him he’s just fucking crazy. Trevor thinks it might be a little bit of both.

At 21 years old, Trevor Collins still understands movies where everyone lives happily ever after, he still understands why people make promises that they can’t keep, but at 21 years old he was only just starting to understand why people fall in love. 

At 21, he still had a lot of things he needed to learn. 

********************************************************************************************************

Matt knew he was fucked the moment his buyer of the day threw a punch. Most of the time Matt could talk his way out of fights, and if not he knew how to throw a punch for that reason. Being able to throw a punch was a job requirement for selling drugs. Matt learned that lesson early on in his career as a drug dealer. But most of the time the men throwing punches at him were the spoiled brats from his hometown, not men who were six foot six, and weighed close to 300 pounds, most of which was pure muscle. 

So in other words Matt was fucked. 

What Matt didn’t expect to happen is for a short man with a Boston accent to save him. 

Matt’s buyer must of had at least a foot and a half on his rescuer, but it was the shock that let the short man with a Boston accent to come out the winner in the fight. He got in six or seven punches before the man even started to fight back, and by that point his short rescuer had the guy beaten. After that it only took three or four more punches before his buyer fell to the ground, and the short Boston man to snap his neck. 

The man who saved him from certain death introduced himself as Jeremy. Matt introduced himself in return, and asked Jeremy if he liked writing in lime green ink. Just like he did every time someone introduced themselves as Jeremy. This Jeremy laughed and asked if he wrote his name in black ink and barely legible cursive and had a second soulmate named Trevor. Matt smiled in return. 

Their names matched. They were soulmates.  
Both of them were buzzing with excitement.  
The feeling was indescribable, it was unlike anything Matt had ever felt before. Matt had read that when you meet your soulmate, even if you don’t know their name yet, that you’ll know their the one. That you’ll feel it in your bones, in your heart.  
What Matt read wasn’t wrong. 

Matt learned that Jeremy started his criminal career in the Boston Mob at 17 years old, and he ran away from the city that raised him at 21. Matt learned that Jeremy had a certain knack for stealing, and that he could be brutal and murderous when he needed to me. Matt learned that Jeremy hated going without dinner, watched romantic comedies in his spare time and that he could never say no to a fight.

After that fateful day the two of them fell into a routine. It was a simple one, but it worked for them. 

Matt bought, traded and sold drugs in back alleyways still, but now he had Jeremy standing by his side. Now he didn’t so much have to worry about dying in a back alleyway because he said the wrong thing to the wrong person. Jeremy taught Matt how to properly use a knife for self defence, Matt refused to pick up a gun, but still learned after months of Jeremy begged him to learn. He learned by shooting at tin cans in the alley behind their apartment, and they paid their rent with the money that Jeremy (and sometimes Matt) got from pickpocketing, selling drugs, and robbing people blind. 

Their routine was simple, but it got them through life in the City of Roosters. 

After they met in a dark alleyway in the dead of night one fateful day, their names started to get whispered. They started to make a name for themselves. It didn’t even take a year before Matt’s small drug ring to become the biggest in the city. 

Matt’s drug ring even became bigger than even the one the Roosters ran, and suddenly Jeremy and Matt were something.

Axial and 6401 became the biggest names in the drug market. You went to them to get the best stuff, and if you screwed them over you weren’t alive long enough to make it out of the city. The apartment they shared went from shitty to okay to nice to one of the best in the city in the span of a few months. And soon everyone knew their names, the not so corrupt cops wanted them dead. And suddenly they had people working for them. 

Axial and 6401 were unstoppable. 

Matt Bragg at 23 years old, was still dealing drug, only now it was on a much larger scale, and he had Jeremy watching his back. He hadn’t thought about his hometown in South Carolina in over two years, still hates to be called Matthew, and no longer lived in the wrong side of Liberty City in a shitty apartment. 

At 23 years old, Matt has started talking to his mom or dad at least once a month. His met one of his two soulmates, and still has a habit of pickpocketing anyone one wearing an expensive suit and who talked with a southern accent. 

At 23 years old, Matt Bragg still understands why people fall in love, he still understands sappy movies where everyone lived happily ever after, but at 23 year olds he was finally just starting to get why people make promises that they can't quite keep. 

At 23, he fell in love for the first time. 

********************************************************************************************************

Jeremy didn’t exactly know why he stopped to help the skinny, lanky guy who was getting the shit beat outta him in a dark back alley at 2 in the morning. Maybe it was that he felt bad for him. Maybe it was that the guy was taking every punch without a complaint. Maybe it was he was looking for a fight. 

Maybe it was that he couldn’t ever say no to throwing a punch.

In the end though, Jeremy was glad he stopped to help the skinny, lanky guy, with long brown hair, the tips of which were dyed with a bright color, who was clearly shocked by the fact that he had been helped out of certain death. When Jeremy introduced himself, the man, Matt, he had introduced himself as, asked if he had a thing for lime green inked pens. Jeremy laughed at that. Because yeah, his favorite pen had lime green ink and was the only pen he still had left from his way to expensive gen pen set that he had spent an entire paycheck on in high school. 

Jeremy asked in return if he wrote in deep black ink and barely readable cursive, and had a second soulmate named Trevor.  
Matt just smiled.

Both of them were buzzing with excitement.  
Their names matched. They were soulmates.  
People had told Jeremy that when you meet your soulmate, you’ll know it’s them almost immediately. That you will know their the one before they even say their name to you. Jeremy had always though they were full of shit. That there was no way that real life was like sappy movies he watched in his spare time.

They were right though, the moment he looked at Matt, he felt it. A buzz that left him with a feeling that he would never be able to put into words. A feeling in gut that left him giddy and happy. He knew right away that Matt was his soulmate.

Jeremy learned that night, the two of them hidden away in Jeremy’s shitty apartment mixed together under the sheets, that Matt made his living selling drugs, and it’s been that way since he was 18 and alone in a small town in South Carolina. Jeremy learned that Matt pickpocketed anyone who talks with a southern accent and is dressed in expensive suits, and knew how to throw a mean right hook. Jeremy learned that Matt hated being lonely more than anything else, and later down the line he learned that he refused to pull the trigger of a gun, no matter how hard he begged for him to learn, and that he had never tried his own product. 

After they met that fateful night, they fell into a routine. 

It was simple routine, by all means, but it worked for them. 

Matt sold, bought, and traded drugs in back allies in the dead of the night, and Jeremy protected him, always standing by his side. Matt didn’t so much have to worry any longer about dying in a back alley, and Jeremy didn’t always have to steal and pickpocket just so that he could pay rent.  
Jeremy, early on learned that Matt didn’t know much self defense other than how to throw a punch. He taught he how to use a knife. Matt refused to carry a gun, no matter how hard Jeremy tried to convince him to, even after Jeremy taught him to shot tin cans. But at least he started carrying around pocket knife for self-defense.  
(It never got used.)  
Matt’s hand were never stained red. It was the way they worked. The way they functioned. It’s the way life went on for the two of them. 

Their routine was simple, but it got them through life. 

It wasn’t long before Matt’s little drug ring wasn’t so little anymore. It wasn’t long before it doubled, then tripled in size. It wasn’t even a year before the two of them were running the biggest drug ring in the city. 

Axial and 6401 became the people you went to when you needed a hit, and people you didn’t want to cross. 6401, the cat burglar with a murderous side, and Axial, the lonely Southern drug dealer. The two of them were almost unstoppable, and only the few men in the city whose hands were free of corruption were willing to try and stand in the way of the their fun.

The two of them learned how to climb to the top of the castle of the grown man’s playground. 

Jeremy Dooley at 23 years old, is now part of a two man crew, he still has a price on his head, though nowadays it’s for a completely different reason, and now lives in one of the nicest apartments in the city, in the part of town that only highest class of criminals and corrupt politicians live in. Jeremy, with Matt by his side, was now among the type kind of criminals that the cops have nothing on, but everyone knows their guilty. 

At 23, Jeremy Dooley had the startings of a family. He met the first of his two soulmates and still liked watching Rom-Coms in his spare time, still hoping they’ll help him understand happily ever after’s. 

At 23 years old Jeremy Dooley still understands why people fall in love, and he still understands why people make promises they can’t quite keep. But at 23, he’s more than starting to get why in movies people always have happily ever afters. 

At 23, he fell in love for the first time. 

********************************************************************************************************

The first time Trevor heard the names Axial and 6401, he was at a meeting with the leaders of the Roosters. Burnie Burns was complaining that the two of them were starting to gain momentum in the drug selling underworld that Liberty City held than they had any right to. It was just a passing comment in a long drawn out meeting that Trevor most likely wasn’t even supposed to be in, and was likely only there because he was dragged into it by Joel because Adam was out of town, or Adam had just flat out said no to sitting with Joel during the meeting, or even simply because Joel had found him first. 

But the names started coming up more and more as time went on. Whispers in the hallways of the headquarters of the Roosters that Axial and 6401 took over another drug ring, that Axial and 6401 did this, and Axial and 6401 did that. 

Trevor wasn’t in the drug department of the Roosters, but he knew that if they kept taking over drug rings in the city at the rate they were currently doing so, that they would be bigger than the Rooster’s drug ring in no time at all. 

Trevor remember the day that a file labeled Axial and 6401 showed up on his desk at the Rooster’s office. A red stamp of confidencial pressed into the front of the manila folder 

He read the file once. Twice. Three times over before he set out to get ready for his mission. 

Axial and 6401. Real names unknown.  
6401, former member of the Boston Mob. No longer affiliated. In fact, from what Trevor could find, he didn’t leave the Mob on the best of terms, and has price on his head in Boston worth more money then Trevor’s ever seen in his life.  
Axial, origins unknown. Drug dealer, one of the biggest in the city in fact, but doesn’t touch the stuff, and if Trevor is to believe the word on the streets, he barely knows the basics of fighting. 

Do not kill, get to work with the Rooster’s drug ring, was written on the bottom of the file in Burnie’s handwriting in deep black ink. 

It was weeks of watching, learning, and waiting. That's what Trevor did. He learned, then struck when he knew just enough to break you down to nothing. To break you to the point of submission. 

It didn't take long for Trevor to find Axial and 6401. And almost two weeks from there, to find out their real names and where the two of them lived. 

Axial’s name was Matt, 6401’s name was Jeremy. 

It made the names on his wrist tingle. 

While he watched them, while he followed them, he learned that they were both roughly his age, and both fairly new to the city. They were soulmates. They didn't hide it. They made out in the back of the movie theater in North Holland instead of watching the movie, they held hands on the subway talking with their head pressed close together, and the two of them were constantly in each other's personal space. They had an air around each other that screamed that they shared each other's names. 

Trevor learned that Matt was from one of the Carolina’s (he wasn't quite sure which one), and had a habit of pickpocketing anyone he ran into with a southern accent. He learned Jeremy was a secrets man for the Boston mob, he learned that Jeremy was the man paid to keep their secrets, and the one who stole back secrets when they got out. He learned that Jeremy was given a death mission, and in response ran. 

He learned that Matt, Axial, has never killed anyone. It was Jeremy, 6401, who always did the killing. Matt would always watch. Never an ounce of blood on his hands. Trevor learned that Jeremy is a Catburglar with a Murderous side. He’s the one who's not afraid to do the dirty work. The one who can break into a house and steal thousands of dollars undetected, but if you get on his bad side, if you mess with him or if you fucked with Matt, you’re gonna die, and he’s gonna smile as he does it.

Trevor learns that Matt is the nice one out of the two of them, but ‘nice’ is certainly the lighter way of putting it. Matt is the one with proper manners and the one to get decked out in the fancy clothes when needed, but he was neck deep in drug money, stolen wallets, had an attitude as prickly as a porcupine, and a sarcastic wit that kept his words sharp. 

It took him two months before he struck. He took them in the dead of the night from their bed that they shared in an apartment in the expensive part of town, and took them to a worn down warehouse in the outskirts of Liberty City that belonged to Joel. 

Far enough away from the lights of the city that no one could hear them scream. 

He tied them up facing each other. Ropes thick and tied strongly together. He took their weapons. 6401’s gun and knife. Axial’s knife. They didn't have much on them only what they were sleeping with. But he made sure they didn't put up a fight. 

Chloroform helps with that a hell of a lot. 

So he waits. Waits for the chloroform to wear off, and the two of them to wake up. The only noise was the idle dropping of water somewhere in the abandoned building. He waits pacing, silver knife in hand, the one Joel gave him after his first successful solo mission.  
(It’s his is favorite knife, the one he did all his own dirty work with.)

Matt, Axial, wakes up first, groaning in pain, and slowly becoming aware of the unfamiliar surroundings. Trevor’s manic smile grows wider, but Matt doesn't struggle. 

Trevor has things he wants to say to Axial. Things he had plan to say to the two of them. Things he would use scare him and his soulmate, things that he knows about the two of them. Trevor wants to scare Axial, wants to scare the two drug dealer in joining the Roosters. Trevor wants to do so much. Trevor had planned to do so much. But suddenly Trevor has so much running threw his head about the drug dealer that he doesn't register Jeremy waking up. He doesn't register the cat burglar asking Matt if he's okay. 

He doesn't register Matt’s response to the man.

A long time ago, Ryan, who he knows at 18 hadn’t yet met his soulmate, had told him that when you meet your soulmate for the first time it overpowering, because for the first time since your last life your soul is complete. Ryan had told him stories their parents had told him of the two of them meeting for the first time. The stories his older brother had told him all talked about the Buzz, the excitement, the feeling of being complete for the first time. 

None of the stories that Ryan had told him prepared him for what it actually feels like to meet your soulmate. Or in Trevor’s case Soulmates.

It’s a feeling that was so overwhelming that he drops his knife to the ground with a loud echoing clang. The silver knife hits the blood stained concrete floor of warehouse, with Trevor following his weapon to the ground a fraction of a second later, dropping to his knees. 

Trevor for all the things in his life that’s happened. All the good things that have happened to him. Killing his step-parents, meeting Joel, joining the Roosters. This moment. This Feeling. It’s…  
It's an overpowering feeling. Axial and 6401 are silent. Vaguely he registers that the two of them are feeling it too. The feeling of completion, the feeling that the three of them all belong together. 

Later Trevor would learn that this feeling was there when Matt and Jeremy met too. Only softer, less intense then what their feeling right now. Like pin and needles that felt good, the feeling of completion, that of buzz of excitement that they were all feeling. When Matt and Jeremy met for the first time it wasn’t as powerful, because their soul wasn’t complete, but for Trevor the feeling in overpowering and consuming. For Trevor, nothing in the world could have prepared him the consuming feeling of waves that were washing over him, consuming his mind with a feeling of completion. 

Not Ryan’s stories of their parents. Not any lesson that he had learned in school about soulmates. 

The feeling is one of bliss to him.

Maybe it’s because this is something he’s wanted his whole life, and wanted more than anything after Ryan was pushed out of his life. Or maybe it was because somewhere deep in his mind he still heard his step-parents voices saying that he’ll never meet his soulmate, the same voices that sometime still keep him up at night, and have kept him up night since he was far too young to understand the type of pain his step-parent pushed on him. 

But for the first time since before he had killed his tormentors, Trevor was crying. 

It was Jeremy, Jeremy who saw Trevor crying, who saw the man who took them from their bed in the dead of night, fall to his knees and start crying and reacted. Jeremy was the first of the three of them to speak up since the feeling of completion had brought him to his knees. “Trevor? Is your name Trevor?” His voice was strained and frantic, they’ve been looking for him Trevor realized almost suddenly when he heard Jeremy speak up. 

They’ve been looking for their third, they wanted to find him. Trevor had been watching the two criminals for months now, watching the two of them go on dates, and make out in the back of movie theaters, and hold hands on the subways sharing whispers back and forth with their heads close together. But at the same time the two of them had been looking for him, and he hadn’t realized it. They were looking for him to be added to the what they had, to share what they had built with him, and he hadn’t known.

Trevor stood up, his hand gripped back around the base of his silver knife, and stumbled toward Jeremy, his eyes red and cheeks stained wet with tears. 6401 nodded to his left arm, and Trevor pushed his sleeve up. 

There, alongside the name Matt written in the same black ink that was on his wrist, was his handwriting, his signature. In pink sparkly ink. 

It was the pen on his desk back in the Roosters Headquarters, the one Joel had given to him as a joke for his 19th birthday just under a year after he joined the crew. The one that he had been signing his name with on paperwork for the last few months, because Joel and Adam were slowly stealing every other pen that he had been on his desk. 

By this point, it was almost his favorite pen merely out of the fact that it was the only one that he ever had. (He also kind of liked it, but he would never tell anyone that, because that would mean a victory for Joel, and Trevor couldn’t let him win this one. He complained about it purely to tick Joel off). 

He untied the complex knot holding Jeremy first, then Matt, and then shoved his wrist into Jeremy’s face. 

They matched. Trevor had Jeremy’s lime green ink and Matt’s pitch black cursive written on his wrist, and they had his chicken scratch handwriting in pink sparkly ink on their wrists. 

They were soulmates.

(It was hard to explain to Burnie that Jeremy and Matt easily agreed to join the Roosters without so much of a fight. It was easier to explain to him that they were his soulmates.)

After that night as time passed, Trevor learned that Jeremy joined the Boston mob when he was 17, and left the mob that turned him into what he is today with a target on his head when he was 21. His parent left him without food most nights, and the kids at school left him with bruises and red stained clothes. He learned that Jeremy learned to pickpocket out of the need to survive, and did gymnastics in high school.

Trevor learned that Matt’s childhood was filled with Sunday school, learning proper manners, and etiquette classes. That his parents constantly passed him from nanny to nanny, and he ran away from the lonely, echoing, and empty house he had called home three times in his teenage years. He learned Matt started dealing drugs out of the want to fill the constant feeling of loneliness, because he wanted to feel needed by someone, and despite everything Matt hates about them, still talks to his parents at least once a week.

Jeremy and Matt in turn learned that Trevor’s first victims were his step parents, who left him with nightmares, bruises, blood soaked clothes, and habits he can't seem to break no matter how hard he tries. His Soulmates learned that Caboose, Joel, was the one to refine his skills as a torturer, and he came to Liberty City when he was just 18.  
They learned that some days he’s still terrified of breaking his step-parent’s rules.

And Trevor told the two of them about his memories of Ryan, his protechtor, his older brother, the person who left Trevor with a hole in his heart that even Jeremy and Matt can’t fix. He told his two soulmates the stories Ryan had shared with him about their parents.  
And he told the two of them that he wouldn’t stop looking for him until he finds answers.

(He still can’t find any record of a Ryan Collins or Ryan Haywood after his eighteenth birthday. There’s nothing that says that Ryan is dead, and nothing that says that he is alive either)

Much like after Jeremy and Matt met, the three of them fell into a routine. Jeremy and Matt were powerful, a force to be reckoned with, but with Trevor now in the mix, the three of them were unstoppable. Jeremy and Matt were still dealing drugs. It’s what they did. It’s how the two of them functioned. It’s all Matt knew how to do. Jeremy was still his protection, and he still was a cat burglar with a murderous side. Matt still pickpocketed anyone with a southern accent who wore an expensive suit and refused to carry a gun. 

But now they had Trevor, Matt learned that sitting in while Trevor tortured was fun, that he was good at getting the information out of people. Matt would never pick up a knife, never got his hands bloody. Matt would talk. He would talk, and talk, and talk, until he figured things out. Get the people to admit things that Trevor never could. 

But Matt would never get his own hands bloody.

Trevor taught Jeremy the fine art of torture. How to break someone, how bleed them dry, and how to cut them so they wouldn’t bleed dry. How to get them to bleed just enough that their light headed and dizzy, and disoriented, but not die until you pull the trigger. Jeremy wasn’t good at getting the information out of them, but man was he good with a knife. 

They fell into a routine. Trevor helped Matt and Jeremy with their drug ring when they needed it, and Jeremy and Matt helped Trevor from falling too far into headspace of a never ending spiral of need to see his hands red he would devolve into sometimes, only sometimes, when he tortures. 

They fall into a routine of selling drugs, stealing, robbing, pickpocketing, and torturing for information. 

The three of them, Axial, 6401, and Zed, became the people you went to in the City of Roosters when you need a hit, when you needed information, when you needed someone dead, and people you didn’t want to cross. 6401, the cat burglar with a murderous side, Axial, the lonely Southern drug dealer, and Zed, the tortured boy who craves the screams of tortured souls were on top of the fucking world.

The three of them became the kings of the playground, and no one dares to stop them. 

The three of the became the kings of the playground, and they had the Roosters standing behind them. 

Trevor Collins at 23 year old, is still part of the Rooster’s, but now mainly works only with Jeremy and Matt, and is now sitting at the top of the City of Crime, not just thriving in it. He still craves the scream of the people he tortures, craves for his hands to painted red, and now lives in a penthouse in the heart of criminal district of Liberty City with his two soulmates.

At 23 years old, he still can’t seem to break some of the habits that his step parent’s gave to him. He’s finally met his Jeremy and Matt. Trevor still spends more time then his willing to admit to looking for his older brother to no avail. He still takes the jobs that nobody, not even Joel, wants from Burnie. Joel now tells him he has a death wish, rather than telling him he’s crazy when he takes those types jobs from Burnie. Though Trevor is starting to think he’s just a little crazy. Because he certainly doesn't want to die yet. 

At 23 years old, Trevor Collins still understands movies where everyone lives happily ever after, he still understands why people make promises they can’t keep, but at 23 he thinks he finally understands stands why people fall in love.

Because at 23 years old, he fell in love for the first time. 

********************************************************************************************************

It was no secret who the Fake AH Crew were. They were the biggest crew in Los Santos, and technically, they were part of the Rooster’s. The Fakes were founded by Geoff Ramsey and Jack Pattillo after they informally left the Rooster’s and Liberty City for Los Santos and for bigger and better things. 

The Fakes were different than the Rooster’s, who were the definition of organized crime. The Rooster’s dealt drugs, their jobs were routine, careful, planned out to a tee, and hired out mercs to their dirty work for them. 

While the Fakes did things differently.  
The bigger the better was their style. They were a small close knit family of crime, and while the Rooster’s may have started there, they were now an Organization of criminals that never stopped getting bigger.

Everyone knows who the Fakes are. They were celebrities in their own right. Everyone knows what they do, but no cop in the City of Angels could arrest them on anything. Not even a parking ticket. 

The People of the City know of Geoff Ramsey, formerly of the Rooster’s, his pristine suits, tattoo sleeves, and his curled mustache.

They know Jack Pattillo, formerly of the Rooster’s, Geoff’s right hand gal, they know of her brightly colored hawaiian shirts and her ability to fly or drive anything on moments notice. 

They know of the Vagabond, of his creepy ass skull mask forever hiding away who is, and the skull of red, black and white that was painted on his face underneath the mask to protect who he is further. They know of all the rumors that pass of what his is capable of doing, and his ever rising kill count, that only ever goes up.

They know of Gavino, the Golden Boy of the Fakes, and the lies that he weaves as he makes his way through the city. They know of his golden gun, his golden shades, his golden lies and the rumors that have spread that he’s Geoff and Jack’s adopted British son. 

They know of Mogar and his explosive Jersey personality. His tics of Jersey anger that lead to fist fights in back alleyways, knife fights, and burned down building. They know of his love for big guns, and bigger booms.

They know of Brownman, the youngest in the crew. The sniper. The know of his fondness for his pink riffle, and his purple hoodies. They know he of his love for video games, his ever rising gamerscore, and they know that he is the best sniper in all of the United States. 

But the main thing that everyone knows in Los Santos, the City of Saints, the City of Fakes, is that the six of them are a family. 

A family, an unconventional one who played games of murder, not games of monopoly. They were a family nonetheless. A family who every Sunday had dinner in Geoff’s penthouse, that was large enough that they all had bedrooms, even though they all have their own apartments spread across the city, and they were a family who loved each other threw thick and thin. They were a family of unconditional love and crime. 

And the six of them were the kings of the city. 

********************************************************************************************************

The three of them, the lonely Southern drug dealer, the murderous cat burglar, and the tortured boy who craves the screams of tortured souls, never really wanted to leave Liberty City. The three of them, Axial, 6401, and Zed were about to see a change in their lives. They liked their jobs. They liked their home. They liked their life. 

But still, all good things must come to end at some point.

********************************************************************************************************

Everyone in Los Santos, the City of Saints, the City of Fakes, knew the day that Brownman left the city, left the Fakes, left their little misfit family of murder, for something bigger, something better. 

Everyone in Los Santos, the City of Saints, the City of Fakes, felt the wrath of the Fake’s grieving the loss of their sniper, and little brother one in the same. 

Everyone in Los Santos, the City of Saints, the City of Fakes, still feared the Fakes with them running a man down, running without their sniper. 

Everyone in Los Santos, the City of Saints, the City of Fakes knew when the call was put out for a new member for their crew.

********************************************************************************************************

In the end, it was Burnie Burns himself, who put Jeremy up for the job with the Fakes. Not that Jeremy didn’t want it. Jeremy was fucking honored as hell that they would even consider interviewing him for the job.

But the job was in Los Santos. But it was with the Fakes.  
But Trevor and Matt were in Liberty City, they lived in Liberty City. He lived in Liberty City. His life was in Liberty City. 

Matt’s drug ring was big. But it wasn’t that big, even with the help of the Rooster’s. 

Jeremy wanted to take the job, he wanted to take the job so fucking bad, but he could never leave behind Matt and Trevor. He loved them too much. They were his soulmates. They were his best friends. 

But in the end, his soulmates were the ones who told him to go on that interview. They were the ones who told him spend the week in Los Santos, The City of Saints, the City of Fakes running with the crew, and in the end when he did in fact get the job, it was the two of them who told Jeremy to take it. 

Jeremy left Liberty City three weeks after he was given the job with a his purple and orange handgun, a suitcase full of clothes, the brass knuckles that Matt gave to him their first Christmas together, and Trevor’s silver knife. The one Caboose (Joel) gave him after his first solo mission. Trevor's favorite knife, the one that Trevor insisted that he took with him for good luck. 

So Jeremy took the job with the Fakes in the City of Saints. He said goodbye to Matt and Trevor (only until they could get their ass out to Los Santos) and officially became part of the Fake AH Crew.

The first week was the hardest. Working with a new set of people, building up trust from the ground up again, and not having Trevor and Matt was hard. That first week was hell. 

The second week was better. He was getting to know everyone, he was becoming part of the lads slowly, but surely. Michael and Gavin, Mogar and Gavino, were trying to be his friend, trying to make him a member of the Lads, but a part of him knew that Brownman, would always be their infamous third. They were trying though, and that's what really mattered to Jeremy. But Ryan and Jack, the Vagabond and Jack Pattillo, were still having a hard time with the whole trust thing. The second week made him miss Trevor and Matt all that much more. 

The third week they pulled a heist. It went off without a hitch. They didn’t have a sniper, Jeremy sure as hell wasn’t the answer to their sniping problem. Jeremy thrived up close, with punches, and knives, and pistols, and shotguns. But still their ‘first’ heist as a six man team went off without a hitch. Jeremy fit right in. The third week Jeremy missed having Trevor and Matt by his side, the three of them on top of the world, but finally got why the two of them told him he needed to take the job.

It wasn’t because it was the Fakes offering the job, or because of this or that. It was because Jeremy lived for the rush of excitement that the heists that the Fakes ran gave to him. 

Trevor and Matt knew him better he gave them credit for. 

The heist was simple one, an in and out job. Get the money and run. But for Jeremy, the heist was more than that. It was also the first time that he saw the Fakes in their full heist get ups, and the first time they saw his. 

It was the first time that he saw Ryan donning the skull mask, his black and blue leather jacket, machine gun strapped to his back, and pistols on his hips. 

It was the first time he saw Jack in her signature brightly colored Hawaiian print and body armor. And the first time he saw her fly threw gun fire like it was nothing. 

It was the first time he saw Gavin put on the facade of the Golden Boy with his golden sunglasses, and golden guns. And clothes that cost an arm and a leg, and were way too nice considering they were robbing a bank. 

It was the first time he saw Michael wear his jacket, the one with the wolf painted on the back. (The same one that had sat untouched on the back of the chair in Geoff’s kitchen that Michael had eaten breakfast at everyday since the day Jeremy had arrived at the penthouse three weeks earlier), and the first time he saw Michael armed with his oversized guns, hand grenades and sticky bombs. 

It was the first time he saw Geoff in his suit, a gun strapped to his back and a wicked smile planted on his face. 

But more importantly, it was the first time they saw him dressed as 6401. The first time they saw him in his purple suit and orange t-shirt. The first time they saw him in his cowboy hat and stupid orange bandana that barely covered his face. It's the first time they see his purple and orange pistol strapped to his outer leg, and his (Trevor’s) silver knife on his hip. 

(He had (Matt’s) brass knuckles in his pockets, but no one needed to know that.)

It was Ryan who told him that the knife wouldn’t useful in a heist. That he should ditch it. 

(Later he would save Ryan’s life with that same knife a few heist down the line, but for now Jeremy just shrugged him off. But for now the Knife was more of a good luck charm anything, anyway) 

Michael after the heist was completed, the six of them spread across the oversized couch in Geoff’s oversized penthouse, and counting the money they stole in front of the TV in Geoff’s living room would tell him the cowboy hat was a nice touch. 

The heist was just a simple job, but it was his first as a Fake. And the start of something new. 

The three of them were still at the top of their own playgrounds, still at the top of the jungle gym. Only now they were on different playing fields. On different playgrounds. 

Jeremy Dooley at 25 years old, is now part of the Fake AH Crew. There is still a price on his head, only now it’s for being a member of the Fakes, and he still lives in a penthouse, only now it’s in Los Santos with the Geoff Ramsey and the rest of the Fakes. A penthouse that houses the deadest men in Los Santos, and the deadly toys that they play with. 

At 25, Jeremy Dooley is part of a new type of family, and misses the hell out of the one he left back in Liberty City. He’s met both of his soulmates, and left both of them behind in the hope of achieving greatness. Jeremy still watches rom-coms, only now it’s the sad ones, where the happily ever after never quite comes. Only now it’s less about understanding the happily ever after’s, it’s more about trying to find his own again. 

At 25 years old, Jeremy Dooley still understands why people fall in love, and why people make promises that they can’t quite keep. But at 25, he finally understands why movies, why rom-coms always have sappy love stories that end with they lived happily ever after. 

At 25, he missed Matt and Trevor more than anything else. 

********************************************************************************************************

The Fakes were a family. A family of criminals and crooks. They were a family, who cared for each other, and loved each other. They were a family before everything else. And Jeremy just became a part of that it. 

He became a part of their misfit crew, misfit family and brothers in arms. Jeremy, may not be a sniper. He can’t shoot long distance for shit. But he brings his own strengths and weakness to the table. 

He brings his mean right hook, quick knife slices, his dumbly colored purple and orange guns, and quirky way of fighting that learned making bet he didn’t have the money to pay up for when he was young. He brings his cowboy hat, his (Trevor’s) silver knife, and brass knuckles. 

The Fakes were a family. A family of criminals and crooks. They were a family before anything else, and Jeremy just became their newest family member. 

********************************************************************************************************

Everyone in Los Santos, the City of Saints, the City of Fakes knew the day that the job of the Fake’s missing sniper was filled by a bright eyed 25 year old kid from Boston. 

Everyone in Los Santos, the City of Saints, the City of Fakes watched as 6401 became someone new. 

Everyone in Los Santos, the City of Saints, the City of Fakes knew the day 6401 became Rimmy Tim. 

Everyone in Los Santos, the City of Saints, the City of Fakes knew the day Lil J was welcomed into the family known as the Fakes. 

Everyone in Los Santos, the City of Saints, the City of Fakes knew the day the Corpirate took Jeremy Dooley, the bright eyed 25 year old cat burglar with a murderous side from Boston, as a power play against the Fakes. 

********************************************************************************************************

The first time Matt Bragg made his way to Los Santos, the City of Saints, the City of Fakes, he wasn't, as you would say a happy camper. With Trevor by his side he was on a mission. Matt would like to think that for once Trevor was the rational one of the two of them, but then again Trevor wasn’t all that happy either. 

The first time Matt Bragg made his way to Los Santos, the City of Saints, the City of Fakes, he was on a mission to find Jeremy. To find his best friend. To find his soul mate. To find his cowboy. 

And no one, certainly not the Fakes, were going to stand in his way of getting what he wanted. 

The first time Matt Bragg made his way to Los Santos, the City of Saints, the City of Fakes, Trevor was by his side and the two of them were angry and bitter and missing a piece of them. 

The two of them knew what they were doing when it came to things like this. And that made them all the more deadly. 

The first time Matt Bragg made his way to Los Santos, the City of Saints, the City of Fakes, he broke into the Fakes apartment, Trevor by his side. 

Matt isn’t all that good at the whole breaking and entering thing. That’s always been more of Jeremy’s things, but Jeremy over the years has taught him enough about it that he could get by when need be, especially with Trevor’s help. Especially when he’s being backed by his anger and bitterness of his soulmate being taken. 

The first time Matt Bragg made his way to Los Santos, the City of Saints, the City of Fakes, Matt is angry and bitter at the Fakes for not telling him and Trevor that Jeremy was taken. That it was Joel, who found out from Burnie, who found out from Geoff, that Jeremy was taken by a rival crew in the mists of a heist. In the mists of a hail of bullets, and blood, and police sirens. 

The first time Matt Bragg made his way to Los Santos, the City of Saints, the City of Fakes, he broke into the Fake’s apartment, Trevor by his side, and ready start something with the gang, the heist crew that ran the city of crime and wouldn’t take no for an answer. 

The first time Matt Bragg made his way to Los Santos, the City of Saints, the City of Fakes, Matt just wanted Jeremy back. He just wanted his soulmate, his best friend, his partner in crime to be brought home. And the Fakes were going to do for him. 

Matt Bragg, the good boy neck deep in drug money, was going to get their murderous cat burglar back if it was the last thing he did. 

********************************************************************************************************

The apartment was empty went the two of them broke in. Trevor was good at survance. That was part of his niche. His admittedly somewhat odd niche to have, but a niche nonetheless. 

The two of them, Matt and Trevor, the good boy neck deep in drug money and the torchered boy who craves the screams of the men he tortures, break into the Fakes penthouse apartment and spend time in it like it’s theirs. Like they belong. They play the Xbox that is set up in the overly large living room with a too big couch, and a flat screen TV. They eat the food in Kitchen and act like they belong. 

They’ve gotten good at that. The two of them. Acting like they belong somewhere they don’t. 

According to Trevor and his surveillance over the last week the Fakes wouldn’t be back to their hub of an apartment for 3 hour and 15 minutes. At some point Trevor started looking around to see what the various rooms of the penthouse apartment had to offer up about the crew, giving up on helping Matt build whatever it was he was building in Minecraft. (Something that involved too way much red stone, and was too much of a circle for Trevor to be much of a help with anyway). He went into room after room and looked threw the secrets they held and all with different thing spread around them, all in a different states of clean.  
All of the bedrooms had the same basic layout of a bed, with a nightstand on either side of the bed, a dresser, and a desk. Some were set up differently, the bed in a different spot, pushed to the corner of the room. The rooms all look so similar, but were different enough that Trevor could tell that different people, different types of people lived in each one he went into. 

The first room he went into was practically empty. Nothing personal about it. The walls were white, and the bed sheets were plain, white and bare. There were some knifes and a few handguns on the desk, the nightstand had a book open on it, marking the page, and on the windowsill were a few house plants. The room didn’t hold anything personal, and nothing Trevor found overly interesting.

The second room was covering in a thin layer of dust. There were bookshelves above the bed and the desk, and a TV, (it was the only room with TV in fact), on the desk. The bookshelves held mostly 360 games, some One game, though not many. Some of the shelves looked like the games had been moved around somewhat recently, but returned to the way they were, before the person took the game they had been looking for.  
Trevor had a nagging feeling in his gut that this was Brownman’s room. 

The third room Trevor went into had blue painted walls, and the bed was unmade and push up into the corner. On the desk was a computer set up, and it was an impressive one at that. Three monitors and a rig that probably cost more than the three of theirs apartment back in Liberty City. There was a map of San Andreas County tacked to the wall with pins pushed into various parts of the city. The room wasn’t barren of personal effects like the first room, or covered in dust like the second room. It was clear that this room was well lived in. There were pictures on the night stand of the crew in their gear getting ready for heist, a picture of Mogar and the Golden Boy, the Golden Boy on Mogar’s back. Pictures that made the crew look like a family they were said to be.  
The room looked well lived in, like the person who lived in the room had been living there for years on end. There were stacks of books under the bed that ranged from young adult fantasy books to books about various different historical events to nonfiction novels to kid books printed on to thick and sturdy cardboard paper, and an overflowing toy chest filled with stuffed animals in the closet, like it’s contents have been long forgotten. The room looked like the person who bad been living there belong to was the child of the crew.  
Just like the whispers on the streets say. 

The next room wasn’t barren, or covered in dust, but it looked like the kind of room Trevor thought the member of the Fake AH Crew would have. The closet had big guns and ammo instead of clothes, and the desk had half put together explosives and the rest of what was needed to build the explosives laid around the half built bomb.  
The room may look what Trevor expected from a bedroom of a member of the Fakes, but the room had touches of personal effects spread through it too. A picture frame on the night stand of Mogar and the Golden Boy, smiling covered in blood and looking as dangerous as ever. There was picture of Mogar and Brownman, they looked younger, and they were in Liberty City. Trevor knew that part of town, it was the part of town that were boys became men, he knew that part of town, he grew up there. There was a brown leather jacket with a grey wolf painted on the back hanging on the back of the desk chair, but other than that, the room look stiff. Almost like the room felt unlived in compared to the last room.

The next room was almost completely different from the other rooms. There was a king bed in place of the double bed that was in the others, and the room looked well lived in. Not like the way Mogar’s room was in, but in the way that the second room was lived in. There were pictures on the nightstand of the Rooster’s when they were much younger, and Geoff and Jack were still active members of the Liberty City based crew. There was a picture of Jack and Geoff with a young boy, who has blonde hair and smile that is missing his front two teeth, a picture of the Fakes in pajamas sitting around a Christmas tree, and a newer picture of the Fakes. Trevor knows it’s newer because Jeremy was in it, smiling at the camera, happy, they're celebrating a heist well done. There a laundry basket of blood stained clothes, and cabinet of guns in their walk in closet. The bedroom to Trevor feels like a home within a home. The room has enough to make it personal, and enough that it’s practical for what they do.  
It’s the Master Bedroom, and Trevor realizes that it feels like he’s walked into his parents (not his step-parents, his real parents the ones he lost when he was barely four years old) bedroom. 

It took Trevor a few more tries of walking through various rooms, (a meeting room, a empty room that belongs to no one, and few others), before he got to the room that belong to Jeremy. His Cowboy hat was on the bed, and his silver knife was on the desk. Someone must of put them in here after the heist went sour Trevor realizes.  
He picked up the knife and twirled it around his fingers a few time, before putting into his pocket.

Trevor would return it when Jeremy was home safe, he needed more than Jeremy did right now anyway. 

He continued around the room and sat down on the bed. It was the side Jeremy didn’t sleep on Trevor knew. It was left side of the bed, Trevor’s side, and he looked through the night stand draw. It was empty apart from the brass knuckles Matt had given him for Christmas, before Trevor had met the two of them, and some other miscellaneous trash. Trevor picked them up and added them to the pocket that had his (Jeremy’s) knife.

On the other side of the bed there were four picture frames and lamp on the top. The first picture he picked up was one of Jeremy and Matt. The picture was slightly blurry in the way most cell phone pictures are, but still it showed the two of them with their arms wrapped around each other, Jeremy kissing Matt’s cheek, and Matt holding the camera up to capture the moment. It’s a picture he’d seen many times before. According to Matt, who hated the picture, it was from the first time the ran a drug deal just the two of them, a week and a half after the two of them had met. Trevor remembers Matt saying that it’s one of Jeremy’s favorite pictures.  
The second picture was one of him and Jeremy. It was the one that Matt took the day the three of them met. The image shows him and Jeremy sitting on the couch in Matt and Jeremy’s old apartment looking at each other, eyes soft and laughing at whatever they were talking about. The picture was taken by Matt, and was one that Trevor has told him to delete more than once. Matt had laughed at him and told him ‘we're soulmates dude. I get to take cute picture of the two of you now’. And that was that. Matt had that picture set as his lock screen since then, Trevor still hates it.  
The Third was one from the airport from the day Jeremy left for Los Santos. It was of him and Matt sitting on a bench in the airport in their pajamas, Trevor’s head resting on Matt’s shoulder half asleep. Jeremy had taken that picture and got on a plane not even 10 minutes later. Trevor doesn’t like remember that day very much.  
The last picture was one of the three of them pressed together as close at three people could get in shitty plastic chairs and half drunk. It was one that Joel had taken at the Rooster’s Christmas Party. It felt like forever ago, even though it was only just last Christmas. The three of them were all wearing bad Christmas sweaters, and reindeer ears, and they had had way too much eggnog already, and were going to drink more.  
It was a good night. One Trevor never really wants to forget.

The room Trevor realises isn’t like the first room, with no personal effects, nothing that makes the room special, and only what’s needed to live. Or dusty and a shrine to what once was like the second room. Or well lived in like the third, with years and years worth of books pushed under the bed, and stuff animals hidden away in the closet. It isn’t like Mogar’s room, that’s more like a workshop than a bedroom, holding ammo, and the things he need to make his big booms. And it certainly it’s like the last room. The Master bedroom, that has that distinct feeling of walking into your parents room.  
This room to Trevor feels like a placeholder, other than the pictures there isn’t much in the room that screams Jeremy, no goofy nicknacks from the different video games, and no bright purple and orange splashed across everything. It’s just a room that Jeremy happens to be living in. 

Trevor knew exactly why the room felt that way. 

Trevor stood up off the bed and returned to Matt, before he sat down on the couch next to him handed Matt the brass knuckles. Matt knew what they were, and where they came from. Knew whose they were. Matt smiled at him, didn’t say a word about them.  
They both knew who they rightfully belonged to. 

********************************************************************************************************

The two of them didn’t hide the fact that they were the Fake’s apartment. In fact when the five Fakes walk into their penthouse apartment an hour later the two of them don't bother to even look up from where they were sitting on the couch. The two of them waved at the crime leader and his men who all, almost simultaneously, raised their guns at the two strangers sitting on their couch.

It’s Matt who smiles, one of those smiles that Jeremy gets when his hands are covered in blood, or Trevor when he’s standing over a someone who's tied up with a knife in hand. It’s a manic smile, one that Trevor doesn’t get see on Matt all that often. “Hello Mr. Ramsey, sir. It’s an honor to finally meet you. I've heard an Awful lot about you.” Matt doesn’t stand, so much as move an inch. The drug dealer doesn’t even look away from the TV screen for more than a few seconds to look Geoff Ramsey in the eyes.

“So you know who I am?” Geoff isn’t overly impressed by this fact, and Matt if he’s being honest, wouldn’t be all that impressed either if he was in his shoes. Geoff is a wanted criminal, who is the leader of the most notorious gang in all of Los Santos, and probably the whole of the United States. “I’m assuming the two of you want something or you wouldn’t have gone through the trouble to be here sitting on my couch.” Geoff answers he lowers his gun only slightly, but he still had both hands wrapped tightly around the handle and a finger on the trigger of his hand gun.

“You see the two of us. We have, what you would call a common goal. You’re missing someone from what I hear, and we want to see to it that he is safely returned to you. We’ll help with your little missing cowboy case. So, how long has the Corpirate had 6401 now?” Matt looks over to Trevor, briefly and Trevor answer his question before any of the Fakes could answer it for him.  
“Two weeks, four day, and I’d say roughly an hour and fifteen, maybe sixteen minutes. That’s just a rough estimate. My information might be a bit off, seeing as it’s coming from Liberty City.” Trevor answers, not looking away from the television screen, as his character on screen continues to place block after block in the pattern that Matt had told him to use. 

“See you guys want your cowboy back. We’ll help you to do that, almost free of charge. You want your crew member back, and we, well we just want the Corpirate as payment. No money, no nothing. Well, okay maybe a warehouse to borrow for a day or two too so we don’t have to drag his bald ass back to Liberty City. But that’s it, we just want the Corpirate.” Matt finally dropped the controller and stood up and faced the five men who were pointing their guns at him and Trevor. 

“Why should we trust you?” It Jack who speaks up slowly lowering her gun ever so slightly, her finger still on the trigger, but no longer pointed at the two strangers who had broke into their penthouse.

“We never said that you should trust us Ms. Pattillo, but we have our reasons for wanting the Corpirate dead, and you have yours. You capture the Corpirate, we’ll get you 6401 back, and me and my friend here get to kill the bald headed prick. Free of Charge” Matt answers. It’s the truth. There no reason for the Fakes to trust the two of them. It's not like they know that Jeremy is their soulmate. They know he has one who he’s met, but they don’t know that it’s the two of them.

To the Fakes, Trevor and Matt are just two people who want to see to it that the Corpirate is killed, and that Jeremy is not dead by the end of it. It a risky play, running in with a claim of you shouldn’t trust us, but work with us anyway because we have a common goal. It’s the kind of thing that under normal circumstances would get people like Matt and Trevor killed.

“What if we say no?” It’s the Vagabond who ask the question, the mask just as frightening as the stories say, and his gun still pointed at the two of them. The question that Matt is sure that all five of them are thinking right about now. So Matt smiles his manic smile once again, pushes his glasses up and answers the Vagabond as truthfully as he can.

“You see Mr. Vagabond, Sir. My friend and I, we are gonna kill the Corpirate. Slowly and painfully. If you don’t want to help us that’s fine and dandy. We can catch the Corpirate on our own. We just thought that you’d like to help in getting your cowboy back from him. And two more sets hands sure can’t hurt you” Matt pushed forward and Mogar cocks his gun, Matt smiles again, it’s not the same smile as before. It is a different one, it’s softer, less harsh, less vicious, but still dangerous. “Sorry, Mogar just wanted to introduce myself. My name is Axial. This is Zed.” Matt says holding his hand out for a handshake. There is silence for a moment, before anyone speaks up. 

“You two work for the Roosters right?” Geoff says shaking Matt’s hand after holstering his gun. Matt nodded, smile on his face. A different kind of smile though. It’s not manic, or soft. But it’s only that shows that he’s dangerous. The kind that Trevor normally only saw when Matt was planning something, or sitting in with one of his tied up victims. 

“So you know who we are then too Mr. Ramsey?” Matt says to the leader of the Fakes. It didn’t surprise Matt that Geoff knew who they were. They were big names in there own right. Not as big as the Fakes, or nearly as big as the many of the Rooster who ran Liberty City. But they were big in their own brand of crime. They at this point controlled almost all of the drug going in and out of Liberty City, and much of that on the East Coast. Chances are if you were looking for a fix on any of the east, you were buying from one of Matt’s men.

“Now what are two little Rooster’s doing all the way out here?” The Vagabond says his skull capped face cocked to the side, but his gun no longer pointed at them. The Vagabond was curious, and Matt could understand why. Rooster’s don’t often come to Los Santos, they stay out of the Fakes way, and Fakes, other than Jack and Geoff, stay clear of Liberty City, and anything that has to do with the Roosters. It was an unspoken truce that’s been going on since long before Trevor was a member of the Roosters. 

“And if I remember correctly, you two are drug dealers. The biggest name of such in the city.” Geoff said interest in his voice to what these two brought to the table. Interested in why they wanted Corpirate dead. Interested to why they would fly across the country to see to it that he would die by their hands. Interested in why they wanted the Corpirate to die slowly and painfully.

Trevor laughs at Geoff’s statement, puts a smile on his face. The wicked kind of smile that Matt normally only see on him when he is standing over one of his victims, hands bloody and a knife in hand. “We’re so much more that Mr. Ramsey. Just you wait and see.”

********************************************************************************************************

Jeremy remembers how one minute he was firing bullets at pigs, trying to make it to the getaway chopper, and the next minute it being just darkness. 

Jeremy remembers waking up in a warehouse tied to a chair with ropes tightly wrapped around his wrist and ankles, and a red ribbon gag in his mouth. 

It reminds him of how Trevor set up his victims before he plays with them. 

Jeremy remembers water, coldness, darkness, pain and fear. 

Jeremy remembers thinking that he wouldn’t ever see Matt and Trevor again.  
The names etched onto his wrist ache with longing for what he might not get to see again. 

********************************************************************************************************

Matt, a lot like Trevor has some habits that he can’t seem to break from his childhood. When he was younger, before he was King of the Drug World of Liberty City with people at his beck and call 24/7, before he ever thought about something more than dealing drugs in South Carolina, he use to have to cut and bag his own drugs for selling without much help. (Even Trevor and Jeremy were never really good at cutting drugs).  
Much later in his life he would hire someone with the Rooster’s money to do it for him. 

Except on the days that are not the greatest. The days that are going to shit. 

It’s a nervous tick. Matt knows it. Jeremy knows it. Even Trevor knows that if Matt is cutting drugs something is wrong. So when Matt put out a call out to the drug dealers of Los Santos that he was looking for uncut drugs, Trevor knew something was wrong. Maybe it was that Jeremy was gone, or maybe it was the interesting day the two of them had braking into the Fakes penthouse, but by the next morning Matt had a package of drugs that was ready to be cut. 

When the two of the got to the penthouse of the Fakes the following morning, no one was awake yet. It was before sunrise, and long before anyone should reasonably be up. The two of them sat down the kitchen table, and Matt set to work cutting his drugs, Trevor playing his old school gameboy. 

The first to walk into the kitchen was the Vagabond, who walked in the kitchen his head down, and looking at the two of them like had three heads. “How did you two get into our penthouse?” the Vagabond asked the two of them as he fiddled with the coffee machine in front of him, (Trevor could tell clear as day that the Vagabond was the type of person who couldn’t function without a cup or two of coffee in him.) though neither of them were sure if he was talking about this morning or yesterday.  
The only thing said in reply to him was “The same way as yesterday.” It was Matt who spoke sarcastically to the Vagabond in reply, not even bothering to look up from his drugs that were laid out in front of him. 

“You know Axial, Geoff doesn’t like drugs in his penthouse.” The Vagabond snapped back at Matt, who looked up from his drugs with a crooked smile. The Vagabond wasn’t happy that they were in their penthouse, and the two of them really weren’t all to thrilled to be there. 

“The secret to being a good Drug dealer Vagabond, is that you don’t sample your own product.” Matt said back, the Vagabond got a look on his face of shock Evan threw his mask. The kind of shock that most people get when they find out Matt hasn’t ever tried his own product. That Matt, despite being to tell you anything about any drug, doesn’t do them himself.

The Vagabond let the silence wash over them once again.

Next was the Golden Boy, who took a cup of coffee from the pot that the Vagabond had made not 20 minutes early. The Golden Boy wasn’t as shocked to see Axial and Zed sitting at Geoff Ramsey’s kitchen table, but still told Matt that drugs weren’t allowed in the penthouse. 

“I’m almost done” was Matt’s reply. After all he did have somewhere he needed to be. 

Slowly the rest of the crew walked into the kitchen, looking for food or coffee or some mix of the the two, all telling Matt that drugs were not allowed by Geoff Ramsey’s rules in the penthouse. But by the time Geoff Ramsey himself walked into the kitchen, Matt was bagging the last of the drugs. Geoff started to say something about how drugs weren't allowed in his penthouse, but Matt cut him off picking up the box containing the drugs he’s bagged and cut in the last few hours and said “I was just leaving. Zed though, if I'm not mistaken wanted to talk to you about the corpirate.”

Matt was out of the penthouse before Geoff could get in another word.

********************************************************************************************************

Trevor, while Matt was gone, learned that in the two weeks since he found out that the Corpirate had taken Jeremy, has gotten more information then the Fakes had gotten on him in almost a year.

Trevor, while Matt was gone, wonder where the hell the drug dealer could of went off too in the city that he’s never been too. And in a city where he has no connects. 

Trevor, while Matt was gone, realized that Matt was probably up to something that would get him into a lot more trouble than it was worth. . 

********************************************************************************************************

Matt, while he may not be the most interesting brand of criminal, knows how to get things done. He’s be on his own, in a metaphorical and somewhat literal sense, since he was a teenager, and even when he was younger he never really had anyone stable in his life for more than a few weeks at a time. Even when he was passed off from nanny to nanny it was never the same one twice. Never the same one for more than a week or two at a time.  
But for almost as long as Matt had been alone he’d been selling drugs. At this point is was just part of who Matt.

It didn't take long for Trevor to pick apart the Corpirate’s life. Everything that was important to him, everything that his life held, and everything he held close to him. It didn’t even take half that time for Trevor to find out who was the Corpirate’s second in command.  
Beardo.

Matt knew the name, names like that are one of a kind, and memorable. Most names in his line of work are just that. Memorable.  
But mostly he remembers the name because the man buys drugs from him for reselling once every six months. He already knew Beardo wasn’t from Liberty City, he just didn’t know that he was from Los Santos, and certainly didn’t know Beardo was working with the Corpirate. 

So four hours after he landed in Los Santos, the City of Saints, and the City of Fakes, and before a week of watching the Fakes every move, and before him and Trevor broke into their Penthouse, he put a call in to Beardo saying that he was in town picking up some new product, and since he was such a reliable customer, he wanted to sell his first batch to him.  
Of course he said yes. Beardo, and the Corpirate were businessmen, and if their best drug dealer said to them ‘I got this new product, you should try it’ of course they were going to say yes. 

They were running a business above everything else. 

So after Matt left Geoff Ramsey’s penthouse, he went to the address Beardo had given to him five days earlier with his box of freshly cut, and bagged drugs.

(They weren’t all that different from the drugs that he sell to them normally, but no one needs to know that. Not with what he has planned.)

The warehouse was empty, and the only sound was his car running idle in front of the warehouse, him still in it. Ten minutes later, another car, pale blue, and expensive as hell looking, pulled up next to his and Trevor’s shitty ass rental. 

Matt, well Matt may not be the best type of criminal. He may not be a cat burglar with a murderous side like Jeremy. Or someone who can systematically take apart someone one piece at a time like Trevor. 

But Matt, Matt was his own brand of criminal.  
And this was his job. 

Its Matt’s job to know how to put on a fake smile, and a cheery voice, and sweet talk his way into things. He knew how to sweet talk his way into money. How to talk his way out of a fight. How to talk his way into information, and to talk his way into whatever you need.  
A lot people think Matt is just a drug dealer. Those people would be wrong. 

Those people only know the fake smile and the fake shell that Matt wears to protect himself. 

********************************************************************************************************

Burnie Burns once told Geoff Ramsey that Matt ‘Axial’ Bragg was a lot like his own Golden Boy.  
Matt is a puppet master, the kind of person who is in the back of the picture, but always in control of what's going on around him. 

Matt plays a game of stupidity and falling back into a submissive role only for show, even though he is the one pulling the strings, the one in control of everything in the game that is set out before him. Matt plays a game of watching, waiting and biting back with harsh words and harsher truths, but only when the time is right. 

But the thing is, he's smart. He knows how to play this ever changing game that revolves around him and the drugs he sells. Matt, Matt knows how to wait in the back of the picture holding his cards in his hand until all the other player have shown their own hands, and all the cards have been played, before finally showing his own hand to those around him. Matt, for as long as he’s been in this business has learned that he’s better off hiding behind his murderous cowboy with a wicked smile, and sitting in with his tortured boy who craves the screams of tortured souls because then they see him as the least threatening, they see him as the soft one. The see him as nothing, and they see him as the weak one of the three of them.  
Matt has learned in all his years of working selling drugs alone, and the few years he stood alongside his murderous cowboy, and his tortured soul of a tuturor selling drugs, that it’s better to play the part of stupid, better to play the part of dumb, and not quite ever understanding, than playing the part of the genius. 

It in a lot of ways was like Geoff’s own Golden Boy, who put on a mask of golden sunglasses, golden clothes, and weaves himself into golden lies. The Golden Boy, though, unlike Axial, was the frontman of the Fakes. The Golden Boy, Gavin Free, wrapped himself in lies to protect himself and those around him. While Matt lied as a power play in the ever changing game around him. 

Burnie Burns is right in some ways. Matt and the Golden Boy are the same in some ways. But in others, in others their oh so different. 

********************************************************************************************************

When Matt returned to the penthouse of the Fakes he had a smile on his face. Trevor knew that smile. He never got to see that insane type of smile on Matt. The smile that he saw on Matt’s face was the type of smile he saw on Jeremy when he was covered in blood, the same smile he saw on himself when he was pressing a knife to the neck of his latest victim for the information he seeking. 

When Matt returned to the penthouse of the Fakes with that insane smile drawn upon his face, Trevor knew something was up.  
Trevor knew that Matt was up to something that he shouldn't be doing. 

When Matt returned to the penthouse of the Fakes with that insane smile drawn on his face and told Trevor he brought him a present. Trevor knew Matt did something stupid. 

When Matt returned to the penthouse of the Fakes with that insane smile drawn upon his lip and placed on his face, with the promises of a present for Trevor, and a man in the trunk with his wrist bound, and duct tape keeping him wide eyed and forced into silence.  
Trevor he wasn’t surprised by Matt, but boy was he interested in what the man could give up about their missing cowboy. 

********************************************************************************************************

When the drug dealer, the one who wore a red sweatshirt that was three sizes too big, a pair clunky headphones around his neck and who went by Axial, of all things, returned to his penthouse with an bound and half unconscious man in his trunk, Geoff wouldn’t say that he’s surprised. He’s more so shocked than anything else. 

He was told, before he had hired Jeremy that three of them, Axial, Zed and 6401, The Dream Team, were somewhat of a package deal. The three of them did everything together. If one was there the other two were never far behind. 

He was told that Axial, the lonely Southern drug dealer, was the brains that Zed and 6401 stood behind.  
He was told that the three of them, The Dream Team, were a lot like his own set of lads. 

Axial, was a hell of alot like The Golden Boy, Burnie Burns had once said to him a smile plastered on his face as he had drank his amber whiskey. The leader, but only in words, not in looks, not in the way anyone would think.  
6401, was a whole lot like Mogar, he had told him, explosive in more ways than one and protective in all the ways that partners in crime should be. He was the face, the one the public saw. But he would always followed the lead of his own Golden Boy. His own Lonely Southern Drug Dealer.  
And Zed. Who Burnie Burns with a soft smile on his face, described as his, now, former sniper. The one who followed the lead of the other two without a second thought about it. The one who wasn’t afraid to go off on his own if need be, but was never far behind from his mates, and was never really without them. 

In a lot of ways Geoff Ramsey saw it watching Axial and Zed in their penthouse, he saw the way that Matt was three steps ahead of everyone around him, and the way that him and Zed circled around Beardo wanting to know everything and anything about the Corpirate.  
Wanting to know about their Cowboy.

In a lot of ways, Geoff saw it. Why Burnie described them as his lads.  
He just hopes that their story would end differently than the way the story of his own three lads ended. 

********************************************************************************************************

The two of them were almost a machine the way that the two of them worked, the way that the two of them circled Beardo like sharks circling its prey. It was systematic, well practiced, and horrifying all at once. They knew what they were doing, and they knew how to do it. 

Trevor knew how to take apart someone piece by piece, and word by word. Matt knew how to be scary, innocent, and franking terrifying all at once. Matt, just like Trevor knew how how to wrap words around you until they were drowning in the scariness and drawn out silence. Trevor knew how to make the words hurt, and how to take you apart one cut, one slice, one piece at a time. 

They circled Beardo like sharks, and they tore him apart like he was their next meal.

The two of them in less than a week of being in Los Santos, the City of Saints, the City of Fakes, had learned more about the Corpirate and his operations then the Fake AH Crew had learned in months. 

The two of them, the lonely Southern drug dealer, and the tortured boy who craves the screams of tortured souls, were on a mission.  
No one was going to stop them. 

********************************************************************************************************

The warehouse where Jeremy was being kept, at least according to Beardo, was up in the middle of nowhere, silence for miles around, and wide open skies. Near the base of Mount Chiliad, and surrounded by heavily armed men who were in the pocket of the Corpirate. The base of the Corpirate, at least according the Vagabond and Mogar, wouldn’t be that hard to get into. The problem, at least according to the Vagabond and Mogar, was getting out, all of them and Jeremy in one piece. 

The warehouse where Jeremy was being kept, at least according to Beardo, had snipers posted on the roof, and fifteen men with machine guns out front. The problem, at least according to the Vagabond and Mogar, was that there was no way of knowing what the inside held. 

The warehouse where Jeremy was being kept, at least according to Beardo, was blue coated metal, and had a green roof. Parts of it rusted, and camera’s lacing the whole thing. There were 37 camera’s on the outside alone. Who knows how many were on the inside. The problem, at least according to Gavino, the Golden Boy, was that the a bug need to be planted in the network for him to get access to the camera’s. 

That’s how, four days after Matt and Trevor, the lonely Southern drug dealer and the tortured boy who craves the screams of tortured souls, broke into the Fakes apartment, they played dumb, and conned their way into the Corpirate’s base. They conned their way into the base with promises of expanding empires and drug runnings on the East Coast. 

That's how four days after Axial and Zed broke into Geoff Ramsey’s apartment the two of them showed up on the Corpirate’s doorstep with a business offer and a flash drive with a virus that will allow Gavino access to the Corpirate’s private servers. 

Most people from Liberty City would know that Axial and Zed worked with 6401. Most people in Liberty City would know that 6401 was Matt’s best friend and partner in crime. That the two of them built the empire that Matt sits on the throne of. 

Most people from Liberty City know that Matt and Jeremy are soulmates. Most people know that if you messed with the lonely Southern Drug Dealer, you would have to answer to the short tempered Cowboy from Boston. 

Most people knew that if you touched the catburglar with a murderous side, there was a lonely Southern Drug Dealer and a torturer who craves screams as much as he craves blood on his hands ready to pounce on you. 

Most people from Liberty City knew that the three of them were the dream team of criminals wrapped up with a bow on top. 

The Corpirate is not like most people, nor is he from Liberty City. 

********************************************************************************************************

The Corpirate, the gullible man he was, didn’t look twice at Matt and Trevor. He saw them as weak. He saw them as two people who did nothing more than run drugs. 

That was his first mistake.  
And it was far from his last. 

********************************************************************************************************

It was almost easy once Matt and Trevor planted the bug in the Corpirate’s systems. The Fakes knew everything that the Corpirate was hiding. 

And then they planned their attack. 

********************************************************************************************************

He was running on nothing but adrenaline. He had never done anything like this before, he was always the type to stay in the back, to watch and wait to strike with words. Never punches. Never actions. But here Matt was standing covered in bright red blood, not his own for once in this life. He was cover in the crimson red blood of the Corpirate’s men. There was no going back for him now. But the lonely Southern drug dealer never wants to be lonely again. 

Matt doesn't want to lose his cowboy.

So Matt cover in someone else's blood works his way through the Corpirate’s base like a there is no tomorrow. He has a knife, Trevor’s knife, strapped to his waist, it was covered in the blood of the first man he came across. He had a gun in his hands, he had never shot a AK before, only handguns aimed at tin cans in back allies, but still he made the gun work for him. 

Matt had never killed before, but he’s seen plenty of murders in his time.  
He knows how to kill.

When Matt finally found the room that was holding Jeremy. The two guards raised their arms, guns in hand, ready to shoot him. But he pulled the trigger first. The two guards fell to the ground with a faint thud, followed by a clang when their own guns fell to the ground. 

Matt was running on nothing more than Adrenaline, and when Matt cut the ties holding Jeremy to the chair with Trevor’s silver knife, he crashed.

Matt fell to his knees, eyes glistened over, and everything he just did catching up to him.  
Jeremy fell beside him pulling at Matt’s blood soaked sweatshirt to get it over his head. Jeremy understood what Matt was going threw. He understood that Matt was in a type of person who didn't like to kill. Who had never killed before.  
Matt wasn’t that kind of criminal. 

Jeremy understood this. Jeremy knew the feeling. Jeremy felt the same thing, went threw the same thing. The only difference is that Jeremy went thru this alone. Jeremy’s first kill was as a teenager, fighting to survive on the blood streets of Boston. 

Matt fell apart because he didn’t know how to deal with it. And in the end Jeremy would always pick up Matt’s pieces just like Matt picks up Jeremy’s own broken pieces. So when the door opened again, Jeremy raised the gun from the ground that Matt had dropped to his side after he killed the two men guarding Jeremy. 

It was the Vagabond on the other end of the gun.  
When Jeremy saw Ryan’s skull clad face, he dropped the gun back to the ground and turned back to Matt. He trusted Ryan to keep the two of them safe.  
Somewhere in the back of his subconscious Jeremy heard Ryan talking. He heard Ryan say that he found them. He heard Ryan say that Jeremy was okay. He heard Ryan say that he was with Axial. 

Jeremy didn’t see when Gavin walked in. He didn’t see Michael walk into the room.  
He did however see when Trevor walked in. His eyes snapped to the door when Trevor walked in. Maybe it was the rush of relief that washed over him from seeing his other soulmate. Maybe it was some other magical thing that had to do with them being soulmates. But still his eyes snapped to the door and to Trevor the second he walked through the door.  
He saw when Trevor walked into the room. He saw Trevor dropped his own gun on the ground and he saw him fall to the ground next to him and Matt. 

Trevor’s hands went to Matt’s face. One hand on each cheek, thumbs wiping away Matt’s tears. Jeremy’s own hands were still balled into Matt’s shirt. The blood stained sweatshirt on the floor between them.  
Because the thing is, Trevor understands too. He understands that your first kill is always the hardest. His own first kill didn’t break him like Matt, but they left him looking over his shoulder, and following rules of his dead step parents set in place years and a life time before. 

Vaguely Matt heard Geoff Ramsey talk in the background. He doesn’t so much remember what the leader of the Fakes was talking about, he didn’t hear what he was coming out of his mouth. He did hear when Trevor said “We got you your cowboy back Mr. Ramsey. I assume you have our payment.”  
Matt looked up and saw Geoff nod. 

The Corpirate was safety tucked away in the trunk of Mogar’s trunk.  
And Matt and Trevor were going to have some fun. 

********************************************************************************************************

Jeremy wanted to go with Matt and Trevor. He didn’t know what the fuck the two of them were up to, but he knew he didn’t want the two of them to do anything stupid. The Fakes had other plans for him. Geoff was pushing Jeremy away from Matt and Trevor towards one of the cars that Jeremy knew belonged to the crew. He pushed away from his boss shouting an apology and climbing into the car with his two boys.  
He heard his crew calling after him, but the only thing on his mind was his two soulmates. 

Jeremy had a feeling about what Matt and Trevor were going to do. And he wasn’t going to let them go alone. 

********************************************************************************************************

At 26 years old, as Jeremy sits in a Fake AH Crew owned wearhouse watching Matt and Trevor slowly take apart the Corpirate piece by piece, the two of them covered in blood, and wicked smiles on their face, he realized that his soulmates are his happily ever after that he’s been waiting for. 

Jeremy Dooley at 26 years old is now a full fledged member of the Fakes. There is a price on his head in Boston for not taking a death mission and running, a price on his head in Liberty City for being the protector of the number one drug dealer in the city, and a price on his head in Los Santos for being a member of the Fakes. He knows now, that even with that price on his head, that his family of Fakes, and his soulmates will protect him with their life. And He now lives in the nicest penthouse in Los Santos with his little found family of a crew. 

At 26, Jeremy Dooley has a family. The one that he wished for growing up. One better than the one that he had as kid, and certainly better than the one the Mob back in Boston gave to him. Both of his Soulmates are willing to lay down their lives for him. Matt was willing to kill for the first time in his life to save him, and Trevor would do just about anything to protect the both of them. He loves his two boys more than anything, and loves his new family nearly as much as his does Matt and Trevor. 

At 26, he could pick a lock with his eyes closed, and was more capable than ever at robbing someone blind. He had better guns, and could shot things with more firepower than pistol. 

At 26 years old, Jeremy knows better than ever why people fall in love, and he lives in the business of people making promises they can’t quite keep. But at 26 years old, he knows why romantic movies alway end with a happily ever after. 

At 26, he is living his happily ever after.

 

Matt Bragg at 26 years old, standing over the Corpirate, covered in someone else's blood for the first time and Trevor’s silver knife in hand, he realized that he’s not empty any more. He still was at the top of drug dealing underworld of Liberty City, he now not only had Jeremy as his protector, but Trevor watching his back too. He hasn’t given a thought to the small town in South Carolina that he gave him his start in a long time. He still hates being called Matthew with a burning passion, and lives in a nice as fuck penthouse in Liberty City with one nice and large as fuck mattress with both of his soulmates.

At 26 years old, Matt makes an effort to talk to his parents regularly. He would lay down his life for both of his boys, and for the first time in his life, has killed for one of them. He still sometimes goes out of his way to pickpocket anyone with a Southern accent wearing expensive suit, and has picked up a nervous habit of cutting drugs when he needs to calm down. He still knows better than to try his own product, and could still talk his way out of a fight with ease. 

At 26, Geoff Ramsey was about to offer him a job working for the Fakes. 

At 26 years old, Matt Bragg knows better than ever why people fall in love, and he certainly understands why movies end with a happily ever after, but at 26 years old he works in secrets and broken a promises for a living, and finally understands why people make promises they can’t keep. 

At 26, he finally got his happily ever after. 

 

Trevor Collins at 26 years old in Los Santos for the first time in his life, and guiding  
Matt threw the killing of the Corpirate, look at his boy and realizes that he loves them more than anything. He still works for the Rooster’s. He is still, by technicality on Joel’s team, though now spends almost all of his time helping Matt with his day to day dealing, and running of his drug empire. He never grew out of craving the screams of the people he brings a knife to, and thrives when his hands are painted red. He lives in a nice as fuck penthouse with a large mattress and his two favorite boys. 

At 26 years old, the habits that his step-parents gave him still mostly linger. He would do anything for his soulmates. Anything to protect the two of them, and anything to keep them save. Trevor still spends a good chunk of his time looking into where his brother might be, and getting back nothing but dead ends. He is taking less and less of the jobs from Burnie that nobody, not even Joel wants. And when Joel continues to tells him he still has a death wish, he can with certainty answer that he’s just a crazy son of a bitch. Because he differently doesn’t want to die yet. 

At 26, he’s about to be offered a job by the Kingpin of Los Santos, and is about to get the first solid lead into where his brother is.

At 26 years old, Trevor Collins understands better than ever why movies always end with a happily ever after, he most certainly understands why people make promises that they can’t keep. But at 26 years old, he can say he understands why people fall in love. 

Because at 26 years old, he got his happily ever after.

*************************************************************************************************************

Once upon a time, there were three fourteen year old boys scared to death of their future. A lonely Southern drug dealer, a murderous cat burglar, and tortured boy who craves blood on hands. The three of them, at fourteen might not know it. 

But the three of them are going to rule the world.


End file.
